Loving her to the end

Abstract

How can I honour my ageing loved one, caring for her with respect and dignity, thereby loving her to the end? This paper is an autoethnography of my experience providing elder care for my mother during the final six years of her life. At the conclusion of this personal narrative, I offer a reflection on the practice of embodied caregiving and perspectivalism, which prompted a transformation in me. The scope encompasses the stages of elder care, from taking on the task to the time of death of the loved one. Adult transformative learning theory informs the paper, as I progress through these steps in learning how to care for my mother. A subtext is that of ascribing great value to the elderly through the means of stepping into their world in embodied caregiving. This process of honouring my mother leads to the goal of loving her to the end.