Growing up while caring for aging parents

You’re in your twenties or early thirties, still renting a bedsitter or sharing a one bedroom with a roommate. You juggle two side hustles and a job that barely covers rent and data bundles. Your salary comes in and half vanishes on fare, food and airtime top-ups before the month even starts.

Then your phone rings.

It’s Mum. Her voice is softer than usual.
“The knee is paining again. The doctor said I need new medicine but the bill…”
She trails off because she doesn’t want to finish the sentence. You already know what comes next.

Or its Dad, the man who once sent you pocket money while you were in campus, now asking quietly if you can send something small for electricity tokens because the prepaid meter is blinking red again.

Your chest tightens. Not just because of the money (though that’s part of it) .But because suddenly you hear the clock ticking louder.

They’re getting older. The strong hands that carried you. The back that bent over charcoal stoves to cook for you. The feet that walked kilometres to pay your school fees. Those hands shake now. That back is curved. Those feet tire faster.

You’re supposed to be the one helping now. That’s how it’s meant to go in our families. You finish school, get a job and start sending money home. You lift them the way they lifted you.

But what if you’re still drowning? What if getting it together feels like a finish line that keeps moving further away every year?

The fear is heavy.

You lie awake calculating. Rent is due. An M-Shwari or Fuliza loan repayment is pending. Your own medical cover lapsed last month. And now Mama needs money for a specialist visit. You send what you can. Perherps two thousand shillings and feel like a failure for the rest of the week.

Every time they say, “Pole, it’s okay. God will provide,” it stings more than if they had scolded you.

You start avoiding calls sometimes. Not because you don’t love them, but because picking up means hearing the tiredness in their voice and knowing you can’t fix it yet. You scroll job sites at two in the morning, apply to everything and pray for one breakthrough that will let you breathe and send real help home.

But the breakthrough is slow in coming. Meanwhile, arthritis is winning, blood pressure is rising and the village clinic queue is getting longer.

The fear

There’s the fear that they’ll suffer in silence because they don’t want to burden you. . The fear that you’ll never give them the easy life they sacrificed for.

And the deepest fear of all; that they’ll leave this world thinking they failed you, when really you feel like the one who failed them.

Even in the middle of that panic, there are small truths worth holding onto.

What keeps you going

Your parents didn’t raise you to be perfect. They raised you to try. They know you’re hustling. They see the late nights, the side gigs, the way you stretch every shilling. When you send one thousand instead of ten thousand, they don’t see failure. They see effort.

You are not late. You are in process. The economy is brutal, opportunities are few and the cost of living keeps rising but that doesn’t mean your love is small. Love shows up in the five hundred shillings of airtime or M-pesa you top up and in the weekends you go home empty handed but stay the whole day washing clothes, cooking and sitting with them.

One day, maybe sooner than you think, the season will shift. You’ll land the better job, clear the debts and start sending consistent help. You’ll take them to that private hospital, buy the good medicine and fix the leaking roof.

But even before that day arrives, you are already honouring them by refusing to give up.

Your parents didn’t keep score when they were raising you.
They won’t start now.

Keep going.
They’re still proud.
You’re still becoming even if it’s taking longer than either of you hoped.