Most of my coworkers, like me, are aging Baby Boomers and recently a group of us got together for drinks after work. We talked shop for a bit and then, as it always does these days when Baby Boomers gather, the subject of “eldercare” came up.
It began when Sage asked Mitch a simple question: “How’s your dad?” And then there was no going back.
Mitch is agonizing over the fact that his 90-year old father is going to move in with him. Mitch’s father is a drunken bully who refuses to bathe or brush his teeth. The old man managed to gamble away the family fortune but still treats Mitch like an irresponsible 15-year old. “He’s not sick enough for a nursing home, and we can’t afford assisted living,” said Mitch. Mitch has nowhere else to put his dad but is certain that when his Dad moves in it will destroy his relationship with Alyce, the high maintenance trophy bride he married several years ago.
Elizabeth’s knows what Mitch is going through. Her mother-in-law, Polly, can also no longer live alone. Polly, a wealthy dowager, is a controlling viper who changes her will on a weekly basis to cut out whichever one of her four kids is currently in disgrace. Polly has been successfully pitting her children against one another since the mid-1950’s and is not about to stop now, and although none of her four kids wants her, she has cleverly tied their inheritance to their willingness to take her in. “My husband asks how much longer she can live, ” Elizabeth told us, “since she’s 88. But Polly’s mother lived to be 101.”
Robert shook his head. His father was a kind man who recently died at the age of 96, fit and sharp until the end. Mr. Montrose managed every aspect of his household to spare his wife, whom he adored, the aggravation, but the upshot is that now, at 85, Mrs. Montrose, depressed and in declining health, cannot so much as write a check or call a plumber to fix a leak. Robert is seriously considering moving back to North Carolina to take care of her, knowing full well that he if he does he will have to leave his partner of 15 years behind because Bill cannot leave his 91 year old father alone.
My dear friend Sage’s frail mother moved in with her last year, and they get along well, but Sage cringes every time the phone rings for fear it might be her sister, Brenda, who gives unsolicited advice on how to care for their mother and who asked accusingly, ”Where were YOU?” when their mother fell in the middle of the night. When Sage suggested that Brenda should make the long journey from Boca Raton on occasion to help out, Brenda said, “Oh no. I can’t stand to see her like this.”
For my part, I was wondering how we never saw this coming. Did we really harbor the naïve belief that our parents would be young forever? Did we really expect that our parents would live to be 100 and then simply pass away in their sleep, sparing us the inconvenience of watching them age?
Throughout the discussion Sue had been very quiet and I remembered that both of her parents had died in their late 50’s, one from cancer and the other from a heart attack. Now she spoke up. “Maybe you should just be grateful your parents are still alive,” she said sharply.
Mitch laughed without humor and Sage snorted. “Yeagh, right,” she said, and ordered another round.