Andrea and Peter that Fred had been acting as a caregiver to Hildy in recent years as she became more and more disabled, both mentally and physically. Many other neighbors shared their relief that Peter and Andrea “came along” when they did. They had all known Fred and Hildy would need help, and no one knew who was going to help them.
Andrea and Peter began to prepare meals, take them to doctor appointments, and over time saw both of them through several more of Fred’s hospital stays. Over the next few years, watching over Hildy and Fred became part of Andrea and Peter’s lives. With the help of an aide, they oversaw all of the older couple’s daily needs.
When Hildy was medically confirmed with dementia, Fred was devastated. They had been married for sixty-three years and his life partner was slipping away before his eyes. A few months later, Fred developed sepsis and ended up in intensive care fighting for his life. Upon recovering from that episode, he recognized that he and Hildy could no longer depend solely on each other for their safety and well-being. He asked Andrea and Peter to be their legal agents, with permission to take over medical and financial decision-making for both of them, and ultimately to be executors of their wills. This was a huge responsibility, yet they felt honored to be able to help these two people they had grown to love.
Hildy died in 2009, and Fred, a year and five days later. Peter and Andrea often tell people of how they “adopted” their elderly neighbors and, though they were often overwhelmed by the work it entailed, they were glad to have been there to help avert a crisis.
Fred and Hildy were extremely lucky to find, at the eleventh hour, two trustworthy and caring people. We can all imagine what might have happened to them had Andrea and Peter not been so charitable and accommodating, or if they had seen their vulnerable neighbors as easy prey and taken advantage of a chance to siphon funds from their accounts or, worse yet, been abusive in their treatment of them.
Thankfully, the story of Hildy and Fred had a happy ending as well as an added bonus: Andrea and Peter learned, through their relationship with Fred and Hildy, that intergenerational relationships are one of the keys to survival for those without children. The experience motivated them to expand their social sphere to include people of many ages, and spurred them to do some additional planning for their own future.
What else can be gleaned from the story of Fred and Hildy? They were “aging in place” and they went into crisis. Their story gets repeated over and over, throughout cities and towns across America. Aging in place is a crapshoot. You may do well for a long time, but things can go downhill very quickly. When the body or mind of an aging parent deteriorates to the point where they endanger themselves by living alone, an adult child usually steps in to help them make a change. Those of us without children need to anticipate the possibility of this kind of trajectory and prepare others to step in when we need help and care.
Having children has never provided a guarantee of emotional and physical support in later life. However, as social scientist Robert Rubinstein and others have concluded from their research, “blood relatives have always been the only source of morally obligated support in later life.”6 That’s a strong and sobering statement. As the baby boomer generation moves into the later decades of life, those of us without children will need to take a hard look at what we might need and who will be there to help us.
Studying what adult children today are doing for their aging parents is an excellent way to better understand our potential needs in later life. Mary’s story gives us a good example of some of the ways adult children are assisting their aging parents, and demonstrates the complicated emotions involved, the creativity required, and the time-consuming nature of the support role:
Mary, who is sixty-three, has a ninety-three-year-old mother, Virginia, who still lives in the two-story house in which Mary grew up. Mary, however, has a good job and many friends in another state and has no plans to uproot her life to move back to her hometown. Although they are on good terms today, Mary and Virginia had a somewhat rocky relationship in the past, and vestiges of the old animosity remain. When Virginia was in her late eighties, Mary tried to convince her to sell the large family home and move into a retirement community, but Virginia was unwilling to move. Mary visits as often as her demanding job will allow, but her trips are still fewer than once a month.
About five years ago, Mary was able to convince her mother to pay for some modifications to her home. Mary and Virginia interviewed contractors together, ultimately hiring a local construction company to enlarge a bathroom, install grab bars, erect a ramp from the front door to the street level walkway, and reinforce a railing on the interior stairs. Virginia insisted that climbing the stairs to her bedroom each night was “good exercise,” and Mary was unable to convince her otherwise.
As an alternative to more frequent visits, Mary has taught her mother to use Skype on her computer. Mary and her mother talk several times a week, and Skype allows Mary to monitor her mother’s facial expressions, general pallor, and get a glimpse of the kitchen where Virginia keeps her computer. Mary always asks to see the pill bottles and watches her mother take her medication.
Though still mentally sharp, Virginia knows she doesn’t do as good a job managing her financial affairs as she once did, so she allows Mary to help her remotely once a month. They go online together and pay the bills on the bank’s website. This generally takes them about an hour because Virginia has lots of questions and tends to forget from one month to the next how the system works.
Mary and Virginia share a financial advisor and Virginia has grudgingly given her consent to allow Mary to speak to the professional about both accounts. However, Virginia is still reluctant to give Mary full access to her finances, so there are aspects of Virginia’s life Mary knows nothing about.
To Mary’s great relief, Virginia has remained active in her church and in her bridge club. Members of both groups visit her regularly and often bring her food she can heat and eat for several days. Mary has also arranged for a young woman to come in three times a week to do some light housekeeping.
Similar stories are playing out everywhere today with parents who are aging in their homes and in retirement communities with limited services. Even in residential care communities, substantial involvement by adult children is evident. In 2010, a national study found 90 percent of men and women in nursing homes and assisted living communities experienced regular and frequent visits by loved ones.7 The casual observer in a nursing home or assisted living community can see immediately that these visits are overwhelmingly from children and grandchildren. Adult children play a significant role in the lives of their aging parents. In fact, adult children are sometimes the ONLY source of emotional support available to the aging parent, especially one who has isolated himself or herself from community contacts or has a life-limiting disease.
Lisa’s mother, Alice, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease when she was seventy-four. Since Lisa’s father had died two years earlier and her brother was a barely functioning alcoholic, Lisa was left to see her mother through the debilitating disease. For a couple of years, Alice lived on her own in a large, age-restricted mobile home park in Palm Springs. She had long-time friends and neighbors there who checked on her and reported back to Lisa if there was a problem. Lisa was a three-hour drive away, so she and her mother stayed in touch by phone.
After those first two years, Lisa grew increasingly uneasy with her mother’s living alone, especially since Alice was no longer driving and had to depend on friends for rides to doctor appointments and shopping. Lisa found herself spending most weekends in Palm Springs. The six-hour round-trip was exhausting and took a toll on Lisa’s own family and job.
The following spring, Lisa decided to move Alice into assisted living with memory care in Palm Springs. She used the proceeds from the sale of her mother’s mobile home to finance the move. Lisa chose to keep her mother in familiar surroundings and near her doctors rather than move her closer to her own home in suburban Los
