A NYTimes headline scored my attention today:
Regular visitors to my blog know that my family have been dealing with my aging mother for years. She’d been living a good life; a fall on some stairs changed that trajectory.
Mom fortunately had a good partner, Frank, as she moved toward her 80s. His drawbacks including increasing deafness, blindness, and being five years older than Mom.
We could see what was coming: Mom would need more and more care. The care would become more and more expensive. Frank would be less and less able to help Mom.
I spoke with Mom about it over the years, advocating to get someone in to help her clean and help her take care of herself. I also kept suggesting that they move into smaller place, such as an assisted living facility or a ‘senior’ community.
Mom resisted most of the suggestions. She didn’t want to leave her house. That home represented her life. She bought it on her own, then got her GED and went to nursing school. Mom opened her home to her grandchildren, taking care of them while my sisters went to school or worked.
I eventually convinced Mom to accept someone coming in and cleaning a few times a week. I paid for it, which helped Mom accept the help. She was also willing let that person in because it was a neighbor and someone she knew.
The arrangement ended when the cleaner suffered cancer and could no longer work. Worse, Mom was falling more often. Her recovery arcs were longer. Each hospital episode left her with more challenges. Yet her will to live was undiminished.
Things took a drastic turn last year. Frank, her partner, fell down the stairs. Hospitalized, he went into a coma and died, 95 years old.
This was devastating for us on multiple fronts and forced Mom’s health from concern to crisis.
Mom tried living alone when Frank was in the hospital and everyone hoped he would recover. Falling, though, Mom couldn’t get up several times and slept on the floor. Cooking was a struggle, so she took shortcuts such as eating sardines with crackers for dinner. She grew thinner and weaker.
My sister took her in. Sis set up a nice space for Mom. Perhaps the biggest drawback was that it was located in my sister’s finished basement. It started out fine but soon devolved into a cold war between Mom and everyone living there. Mom has been vulnerable to UTIs, and we think that was part of the problem.
Mom ended up making suicidal comments. She ended up hospitalized and then in an assisted living place where she does not want to be.
All this is just foreshadowing to me. I’ll be 70 in a few months. My wife is a year younger. One sister is two years older, and another is two years younger. The other two sisters are 8 and 10 years younger than me.
The thing is, even as Mom needs help, all of us are also reaching that point. While I’ve been hospitalized and treated for several issues in the last five years, I’ve rebounded. The same can’t be said for my wife, my sisters, and their husbands.
We’re all facing the same issues that others face in this article: how do we help our parents when we’re crossing the threshold into needing help ourselves?
This is the Silver Tsunami, a term many do not like.
I’ve considered moving to be closer to my sisters and Mom. There are many legitimate excuses for why that hasn’t happened. While our southern Oregon home is ideal for us, the location is not any longer. Just under 1900 square feet, the house is single storied with two bathrooms, and three bedrooms. One bedroom is the home office. This is where we spend our most time, reading, exercising, watching television, on the computer.
The area, though, has been enduring droughts. With the droughts have come water shortages, wildfires, and smoke. As those hit, the local economy has suffered. As a result, Ashland is facing a financial crisis. Adding to that crisis is that two major employers, Southern Oregon University (SOU) and the town’s hospital, Assante Ashland Community Hospital, faced their own crises. Those crises forced them to drawdown in significant ways, with more on the way.
At this point, the future is not ideal. As the article points out, we’re not alone in our problems, both with our own health and aging, but also with helping our parents.
What’s troubling me as much as anything is how the GOP has responded. Trump has cut social services to the aging population. He instead wants to spend more money on the military. Equally troubling is that the GOP goes along with this.
There’s already a growing rural hospital crisis in the United States. With Trump in office, madly spending, the national debt has crossed the point where it is now larger than our Gross National Product.
Yet, Trump’s spending priorities are geared toward bailing out countries, starting wars or using the military as a stick to threaten other nations. These do nothing to help our nation’s aging citizens. Trump’s policies have instead resulted in higher prices across the spectrum, which makes everything worse for anyone living a marginalized life. Including people like Mom.
Projections show that it’ll probably get worse, with more citizens requiring healthcare and living assistance. Natural supply and demand for personnel, food, assistance, and medical care will further drive up costs.
It’s a terrible spiral. As wealth becomes more concentrated in the hands of billionaires who care mostly for themselves and their businesses, the rest of us will keep sliding further into debt and crisis.
Sadly, that is Trump’s America. As it now stands, it’s the future for far too many.
Some may say that I’m being fatalistic. I reply, I’m just reading the news and watching the trends.
Michael Seidel, writer 