Sad Sad News

It looks like Gene Hackman spent a week wandering around his house after his wife died.  Then he also died.

Me and my sister know all too much about this dementia stuff.  If you have an elderly relative, please check in daily!

Eldercare Is Never Easy And Always Hard

This Vox piece gives a pretty good overview of just how difficult (and expensive!) eldercare can be, and how a generation of Boomers going into their Twilight Years is going to be rough for lots of their grown children:

"Boomers themselves have driven tectonic shifts in American cultural norms and family structures — a revolution in divorce, along with a trend toward smaller families and away from multigenerational living — that could make that backbone weaker. Compared to their elders, boomers will have fewer people in their lives able to step in and care for them as they age, says Rachel Margolis, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Western Ontario. In 2010, there were more than seven potential family caregivers for every person over 80; by 2030, that ratio is expected to fall to 4:1, and by 2050, it will be less than 3:1, according to AARP. More care responsibilities will fall on fewer family members, most of them adult children, who may find themselves caring for loved ones alone or with little help, sometimes across two different households."

Me and my sister are living this right now.  If I haven't mentioned it here, I have told my friends -- my Dad has excellent health care and a real pension after three decades of high level Federal work.  And even with those resources, a lot of genuine sacrifices and hard decisions still had to be made.  And more will come going forward as he approaches the age of 95.

My only suggestion?  Let the children of older folks pay some reasonable amount to go on their parents' health insurance if they give up work to take care of their mom or dad.

And the move to (return to?) multigenerational homes seems an obvious and necessary trend.

"We pray"

Not an easy read by any means, but Kate Clanchy on caring for two elderly parents:

"My father and I get out the advance decisions again. They are so clear. 'In the event of an infection I want to avoid heroic interventions', 'I refuse treatment with a ventilator', 'I do not want my life prolonged if the alternative is permanent nursing care'. But she didn’t have those documents with her, because she was going to the day ward. She had completed full medical attorney documents for me, but I couldn’t be there to advocate for her, because of Covid. And now she has been put on a ventilator, for her operation, and when I call the ICU they say she is stuck on it, she can’t breathe on her own. They don’t know if she will ever come off it, but if she does, they say, she will live a very limited life in a nursing home. 'We must hope she dies,' says my dad when I put down the phone. My parents are devout atheists: they believe there is no God and therefore we must live well. So do I. We pray.

Then I start scanning my mother’s documents and emailing them through to the ICU. It seems an especially hard thing to do just then, in January 2021: when the whole country is absorbed in the effort to save the lives of people like my parents, when the national psychodrama is focused on getting an elderly person on to a ventilator, not off it. I’m worried the doctor will think I am a murderer."

I have a lot to say.  I have nothing to say.  This whole piece is worth your time.

Two things -- this stuff is hard, economically, emotionally, and even sometimes physically.

Second, while I can't speak for the U.K., here in the U.S. it's difficult not to resent the fact that I am somehow harming my future professional opportunities by doing the economically sensible thing and taking care of my dad -- as if any "resume gap" is worth more than the wellbeing of people you love and who need help.

We've inherited a mercenary economic system that frankly doesn't care much for older folks, nor for the people who look after them, professional or otherwise.

And to think, my family is miles ahead of other ones in terms of available resources.

This shit is hard even if you have planned for it.