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One day a year or so ago, my father found my mother lying on the bedroom floor where she had fallen while tucking in a sheet. Her collarbone, they discovered at the emergency room, had snapped when she fell, an entirely predictable consequence of her combined ailments—Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis. Something else appeared to have broken in my mother as well, however. Confused and fearful, she took to wandering from room to room at night, looking for intruders. My father, 80 years old and profoundly deaf, felt helpless to deal with the rapidly deteriorating circumstances of their lives.
Since then, my husband and I have moved back to Texas and now live just down the road from my parents. During the past nine months, my father has had three operations, including a triple by pass. Between the two of them, they have seen a total of 12 different doctors over the past year. I have become an expert at reading medical billings, insurance claims, and Medicare statements. My computer's Web browser is bookmarked for a number of disease and medication sites. The learning curve for me has been Matterhorn-steep, however. At first I didn't even know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.
My parents are scrupulous people who wanted to cause their children as little trouble as possible. Since I am the executor of their wills, they long ago gave me copies, as well as a key to their safety deposit box. They made sure I knew where to find their insurance policies. I was present when they planned and paid for their funerals. We had all prepared for death. What we hadn't prepared for was decline. I soon found that I needed a crash course in what is al most as inevitable as death—caring for aging parents. Kubler-Ross may have taught my generation the five stages of grief, but no one had told us about the long good-bye.
Nor was I alone in facing this largely ignored crisis ignorant and unarmed. Just last night, for in stance, my friend Ted called me from Pennsylvania. He mentioned that while his stepfather and mother were visiting for the holidays, the stepfather had suffered a stroke. After his release from the hospital, the elderly couple returned to Georgia. Nevertheless, Ted doesn't think his stepfather is long for this world.
"So, what are you going to do, then?" I ask.
"What do you mean?" he says after a long pause.
"I mean, what will your mother do then?"
No pause this time, just a long drawn-out "Wellll … " as Ted considers this, obviously for the first time. "I don't think she'd live in that house by herself. There's five acres to mow, and I'm not sure she'd be safe alone."
"Have you talked with your brother and sister about this?"
"No," he says, sounding a little uneasy. "But I don't think Mother would want to leave Georgia. All her friends are there." Ted's sister lives in Cleveland. His brother lives in Georgia, but, since he is on probation for transporting stolen pecans, he's not likely to be much help.
"Well?" I persist.
"Of course, my sister would be glad to have her. We would, too, for that matter, but," and again he speculates that his mother wouldn't want to leave Georgia.
I admonish him to talk the situation over with his sister and even his black-sheep brother before his stepfather's next stroke catches them all flat-footed. In fact, I now urge all my fiftysomething friends to ponder their parents' future. For, unless you are an orphan or thoroughly estranged from your parents—and those of your spouse—the chances are that you'll be facing such a crisis sooner or later, if you haven't already.
If you doubt this prediction, poll your own friends who are over 50. You will probably be as surprised as I was to discover how many of them are already wrestling with this problem. Of course, their stories will be as diverse as the individuals who tell them. The particulars are not predictable, only the overall pattern.
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