Feeling our age, Family Mess & Unsolicited Advice – Terry Pluto’s Faith & You

Cathy’s email raised many powerful points. As we age, we can feel left behind. Cathy’s email was much longer, I condensed it for clarity. She wrote that women, especially mothers, feel the pain of their children moving away – physically and/or emotionally.

As we age, we tend to forget how we acted when we were younger. I know I didn’t turn to my parents for advice when I was in my 20s and 30s. I respected them, and we had a very good relationship. But I also wanted to do things on my own, pick my own people as sources for wisdom about career and life.

I wonder how many of you reading this now will be honest enough to admit you did the same thing.

I’m sure there are exceptions, but part of growing up should be growing apart from our parents. There also is a temptation with some parents to make the “kids” feel like they’re still “kids,” even if the “kids” are now middle-aged.

Who asked you?

I was researching this topic and found a Psychology Today story by Peter Gray. The headline screamed: “UNSOLICITED ADVICE: I hate it. You hate it. So do your kids!”

I laughed because it’s so true.

I was recently talking to my brother, Tom Pluto. He was the baseball coach at Cleveland Central Catholic when I played at Benedictine. We were discussing family relationships.

“It was kind of hard because I coached against you,” he said.

“Not as hard as it would have been if I played for you,” I shot back.

He didn’t just laugh, he roared. He loved it. Because we both knew it was true.

That said, I’m very aware of children who played for their parents and/or older siblings and were successful. But it also brings added stress and pressure on both parties.

My brother was a tremendous coach in baseball and basketball. He also was 10 years older. I never went to him for advice. I didn’t want to humble myself and look weak or needy in front of him – even though I was very aware that he knew his stuff.

As my friend Bishop Joey Johnson (Akron’s House of the Lord) often says when discussing these topics in a sermon, “OK, everybody … say ‘FAMILY MESS!’ ”

Psalm 68 Family

Roberta and I don’t have any biological children. But we have two “daughters” and a “son-in-law” that we have picked up along the way. Those relationships began when our “three kids” were in their 30s.

Psalm 68:5-6: “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families … ”

Our family is a Psalm 68 family. Some people feeling ignored by their biological family members need to look beyond the bloodlines.

Roberta had an excellent relationship with her parents, but my wife mentioned how an older woman became like a grandmother to her.

“I felt I could talk to her about anything,” Roberta said. “She pushed me to try new things. This is when I was a teenager and I believe sometimes skipping over a generation to someone older can lead to a connection.”

A reader named John often emails me about different topics. He took care of his wife when she had Alzheimer’s. He went to support groups. After she passed away, he trained to become a leader in an Alzheimer’s support group.

He’s in his 80s. He’s helping families that are enduring what he went through. They have become like a second family to him – another form of a Psalm 68 family.

In the seven years that Roberta and I visited our “mom” Melva Hardison about five days a week, we developed relationships not only with others in the nursing home – but also their families.

We prayed with each other. We talked about and listened to the challenges we all were facing. People would come and go because the nursing home often is the last stop on earth. But new people would come along, new relationships would form.

I had an aunt who helped take care of her husband, who had Parkinson’s. She was in a Parkinson’s support group. After her husband died, she went to a grief class and stayed in it nearly for the rest of her life. She was supporting others who had lost their spouses.

I’m not the only one

“Friendship is born the moment one person says to another, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one!’ ”

That’s a quote from C.S. Lewis. It explains why friendship happens in support groups, on the job, on sports teams and at other places where people come together with a common interest.

While writing this story, I thought of Ecclesiastes 3:1: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot that which is planted.”

Then I closed my eyes as my memory brought up Judy Collins singing “Turn! Turn! Turn!” which opens with that verse.

As we age, seasons change. So do the people in our lives. And just to make some of us who remember the song feel a little older, the Judy Collins version of the song was released 61 years ago!

The theme of this story is that people who are blood relatives don’t automatically form close relationships. They can be weighed down by some very heavy family-of-origin baggage. But as time passes, we can turn to others … and they to us … but we have to be available and open to it.