Front Porch: Showing up matters, especially for our elders

I know of an elderly woman who died recently. She wasn’t rich, but was comfortable in her finances. Never married or had children, she left her assets to her nieces and nephews, who she hosted every Thanksgiving and Christmas from the time they were infants until the time she was no longer able.

Her beloved beneficiaries all lived within an hour or two drive from the care facility where she spent her last several years, none of whom checked in or visited more than once or, tops, twice a year. When one niece got the phone call about auntie’s passing, she just sobbed on the phone.

I simply can’t understand any of this.

Sure, not everyone has lots of time or money, but showing up matters. Doesn’t it?

We do understand that mistreatment of the aged does take place – from outright theft and physical abuse to benign neglect. I understand the push and pull of things, where choices have to be juggled between doing for growing children and/or declining elders, and all the other complications of life, often exacerbated by insufficient resources.

And I fully realize that not all old people are charming or make it pleasant for their families with what can seem like an endless list of demands. Nobody says it’s going to be easy.

But the hypocrisy, the “inconvenience” that our elders pose that seems to justify ignorance of and inattention to those needs, and, in some cases, the sheer cruelty of all of it – well, I find myself staggered and wondering sometimes. People once valued are so casually ignored, or thrown away.

Maybe it isn’t a new thing, but it feels like it’s a growing thing.

My husband and I are fortunate that we’re still navigating our own ship, but our sons, though not living in Spokane, are involved in our planning for the future and show up, not just for the fun stuff, but when there’s medical or other need.

Here’s what I know about many in my own network of friends and acquaintances, all of us who are either members of the Silent Generation or baby boomers ourselves:

I have a friend whose mother had been in a memory care facility a number of years ago. Happily, all of my friend’s siblings lived nearby. One brother was fully retired and could spend a lot of time with their mom. My friend came several times a week, as did the other brother.

Their mother never liked how her laundry smelled, so my friend would take the already-washed clothes and bedding home weekly to launder again, with the soap her mother did like. Her mother no longer recognized her daughter, though they had nice conversations together.

I asked my friend who her mother thought she was. “The friendly laundry lady who stays afterwards to chat.”

With three of our parents, Bruce and I were never in the position of seeing to extended care because they pretty much just up and died, sometimes way too early. But with my father-in-law, he had a debilitating stroke and lived his last two-and-a-half years with us. There was never a question that it would be otherwise.

We had a spare bedroom. One son was away in college, the other still in high school. Gramps had a pension, the whole of which covered the cost of a caregiver during the day so we could both go to work. Before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m. weekdays and all weekend, we were on duty. Bruce handled all the physical stuff; I took care of the financial and medical matters and the cooking (diabetic diet).

Nothing heroic about it. Often it was tough. But that’s what you do.

For some friends, finding the right place to live was the issue. One older mom refused to live with her perfectly lovely adult children, so they found her a senior living unit that would be acceptable to mom and which her retirement money pretty much covered. They visited often, bathed her and conscientiously oversaw (and sometimes supplemented, I believe) all her financial and other matters.

The mother of another friend had too many health problems that required care that couldn’t be provided by her daughter and son-in-law. Dipping into their own funds, they added to what coverage she qualified for and got her into a good facility, and spent parts of almost every day there with her.

Another friend is overseeing the care of her older sister, who has dementia. She handles all the medical and financial matters, including getting her sibling’s house sold so that care could be paid for, while also doing similar oversight for her brother, who has macular degeneration and dementia as well. Truthfully, she is exhausted, but this is what feels right, especially because there really aren’t any other options that my friend can make peace with.

My son-in-law’s mother, Ceslie (whom I wrote about recently), and her husband are finally living alone, now just the two of them, for the first time in decades. His mother lived with them until she died last year, and they had been caring on site for any number of older relatives for 20 years or more.

A woman I know in Spokane has a 99-year-old mother, who is still living in California in the home she shared with her late husband. She has a number of children helping her to remain in that home, even though dementia is taking its toll.

Trish calls her at 7 p.m. daily to say goodnight. “The nightly phone visits are becoming shorter as she (her mother) apologizes for groping at the words …”

Trish shared a story recently. “Mom is waiting to ‘go home’ to her family. Every night she’s asking for someone to come take her home. ‘Sweetheart, I think they’ve forgotten me. Come help me pack.’ I somehow convince her that it’s too dark and tomorrow is a better time or ‘God hasn’t called you, has he? So don’t pack.’

“Having lived two states away from her since I graduated from college, my appreciation of distance went through the change from ‘yay’ to ‘oh, no.’ So I’ve made sure that connections were kept close.

“It’s now time to be her friend, and yet still her daughter. Such a gift!”

One of the friends mentioned above says ruefully that this kind of care and concern that seems so natural and so right to so many of us will soon be a thing of the past, and that younger generations won’t be willing to do for their parents what we did naturally for ours, as generations before us did as well.

Sure hope she’s wrong. But I do wonder.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net