Taking care of elderly parents

It's a reflection of current first-world demographics that quite a few essays are being written about the experiences of adults taking care of parents who are in declining physical or mental health.  Here are several excerpts from a column by Lillian Rubin in this week's Salon:

Listen in on a group of middle-aged children of the elderly, and you’ll hear that even the most casual mention of aging parents is likely to open up a Pandora’s box of anxieties. These are stories told with tears, with exasperation, and sometimes, when they can take a step back, with laughter. Not funny ha-ha mirth, but more like the hysterical laughter we all experience at those moments when we’re forced to come to grips with the absurdity of life and our own helplessness.

Even if their parents are still doing fine, middle-aged children need only look around at friends and neighbors to be reminded that these anxieties will become theirs one day... the demographic and cultural context in which this takes place is vastly different now than it was a century ago. Then, few women worked outside the home, so someone was available to care for an ailing parent. Today, a changed culture combined with economic need has put most women in the labor force alongside their men, which means that there’s no one at home to take care of Mom or Dad when they need it...

Those in their 60s and 70s, who looked forward to these years with their promise of freedom from the responsibilities that bound them before, are now asking: “When do I get to live my life for myself?” The younger ones, who at middle age are already stretched thin by their own financial problems — worried about how they’ll provide for their children’s education, whether they’ll ever have enough for their own retirement, how they’ll live the rest of their lives — are asking: “How can I do it all?”...

If there’s one word to describe the dominant feeling on both sides of the bridge that connects the generations at this stage of life, it’s “ambivalence.” “I love my parents, but…”  ...The parents’ stories are the mirror image of their children’s. “I love my children, I know they want to help, but…” The words say they appreciate their children’s concern while they feel it as an infringement on their autonomy...

“I feel like I’m being torn to pieces,” cries a 48-year-old woman as she struggles to balance her care and concern for her 70-something parents who need help and don’t have the financial resources to pay for it. Her parents’ response: “We just want her to stop nagging us and let us live our lives the way we want to.” I remind them that their daughter says they can’t afford to continue to live their lives as they have. “That’s our problem,” her mother replies, hotly. “We’ve managed until now. We’ll manage again.” It’s a no-win situation...

There is no right and wrong here, no black and white; there are only shades of gray in situations so murky that it’s nearly impossible for either parents or children to know just when it’s the right time to take a step, make a move...

“This was supposed to be my time,” says a 75-year-old retired widower whose 94-year-old mother has been living with him for 13 years. “It’s hard not to think, What about me? I’ve had some heart problems, and I think about that and know that, well, you know, I could die anytime and I’ll never have had the chance to live these years like I wanted to.”

The rest of the essay is at Salon.