In 2023, my dad called to tell me he'd dropped down to four days a week at work. He'd had a long career as an insurance underwriter, though it didn't define him. At one point, he even left the profession to become a plasterer for a decade to better balance out his schedule. Still, it served him well enough. "You really are getting old, then," I joked. Dad laughed - he was only in his 50s.
My 40-year-old daughter has been living in a house with a very nice older, recently retired gentleman for about 10 years. He has an adult son and daughter-in-law who are drug addicts. Recently, because of domestic violence in front of their 4-year-old boy, the daughter-in-law was arrested and has an order of protection to stay away from her husband. In the meantime, the man whom my daughter is living with is now temporarily taking care of the 4-year-old.
I have spent a year helping my elderly parents sell their house and pay off tremendous debt, mostly due to my mother's spending and hoarding. My father is unable to handle anything due to health issues. I have had help from my family so I'm not alone in this. I am still very involved with helping them with finances and doctors. They are in a small rental now with no maintenance or yard duties.
At age 10 in 1960, I started shoveling sidewalks and mowing lawns. I used to cut a lawn for 25 cents. I worked at a produce market, washed dishes, and worked in retail while growing up. My mother was sick for a few years and died when I was a senior in high school. I went to prep school for a year and then college for a year, but I quit to become a caregiver to my younger siblings.
I took it upon myself to be that person in the hospital every single day chasing doctors, taking notes, making sure I understood why they were doing things. It was so stressful, she says, that at one point her hair started falling out, but she ploughed on. It was Jones's therapist who gently questioned whether she was going to ask for help. Jones laughs. The hair falling out didn't suggest to me that I needed help, it was somebody else looking in and saying that.
I resisted. How could I keep my promise and still consider a group home? The professionals all said the same thing in different words: You can't do this alone. What happens when you get older? He needs a trained staff. His physician, who'd known Chris since he was 3, was even more direct: A group home could offer the structure, safety and supervision I couldn't provide alone.
I have been there. Waking up early, even hiring an early babysitter to help me get my son ready on time so we could both go to school and work. My husband is the primary breadwinner in our home. He often had to travel for work, so the burden was on me. I recall the stress of it all - arranging someone to pick up my son when I could not, managing logistics, and making payments. It was hard earned money lost.
burdened by loneliness, depression, and the incessant needs of others, pours herself a stiff drink and steps up to the noose she's hung from the rafters of her airy farmhouse. Then the phone rings: her ungrateful brother, making demands. She tries again-another ring, another request, this time from a friend. She plays the piano, doesn't she? Will she join a group of fellow-amateurs for a charity gig? Twice thwarted, Beth sighs, says yes, and gets on with the business of living.
As a result of multiple disabilities, my wife may never be able to have sex with me again, or at least not for a long time. She always had a low libido, but recent developments have made sex actively difficult and unpleasant for her. I love my wife and do not wish to divorce her, but this presents a problem for me, because I have a very active libido.
My mom died when I was young, so I grew up spending summers with her mom in South Dakota. I loved that time with her, but I often only saw her that one time of year. I lived back in Florida with my dad for the rest of the year. When my grandma was older, she embraced the snowbird lifestyle and spent half the year in Florida to escape the Midwest winters.
I worked hard to build a life for Penny and myself, and I have remained single all this time. Her father has passed away, but he had several other children, and his parents still live in our same small town. I thought my secret (and right to privacy) had been respected, but I recently found out that someone told Penny about her other family several years ago.
As a documentary filmmaker, anticipating the unexpected is part of the job. We learn to obsess over what could go wrong-equipment failures, weather shifts, emotional volatility, permissions falling apart, safety concerns, or a once-in-a-lifetime moment slipping away. We become experts at scanning for danger, preparing for the failure before it arrives. It isn't neurosis-it's craft. It's training. It's how we keep the work alive.
Take Me Home is a film about a caregiver, and the spirit of caregiving infused the entire production. Writer-director Liz Sargent based the feature, her first, on her short of the same name, which premiered at Sundance in 2023. It stars Anna Sargent, her sister, as a woman with a cognitive disability who is the caregiver for her aging adoptive parents.
In reality, the job of my dreams consisted of overnight flights where I'd get little to no rest, then hit the ground running as soon as I arrived at my destinations. After I'd fly back home from some trips, it would take me nearly a week to recover from jet lag. My stress levels were often cranked up, dealing with flight delays, deadlines, and navigation across different states and countries.
We met for coffee a couple of times and then that relationship broke up, very dramatically, and it really wasn't long before we got back together. We got engaged, bought a house, got married within a year and got pregnant shortly afterwards. I don't regret anything, I've got three amazing children, but most normal people would possibly have just spent a bit more time together. I was swept up in it and I'm not going to suggest that I was a passive person.
Twice a month, I go to my eye doctor for injections that slow the loss of my vision. The waiting room is always filled with quiet tension-fearful eyes, deep breaths, people trying not to crumble. I sit and breathe, waiting for my name to be called. And every time, without fail, there is a woman-maybe in her late fifties or early sixties-who enters already furious. Before she even sits down, she's fighting with the receptionist.
Human development is a lifelong, cumulative process. Midlife, however, is largely overlooked and misunderstood. When exactly is midlife? The general consensus is that midlife encompasses the years between 40 and 60, give or take. In a 2015 poll, people expressed the belief that midlife begins at age 44 and ends at age 59, however the roles and life circumstances that surround middle adulthood are perhaps more defining of this era than a specific age.
I consider my mom the crème de la crème of mothers. She was the involved kind; always pulling out crafts, baking cookies, and making you feel deeply loved. But as a grandma, she's the first to admit things haven't unfolded the way she imagined. I can't think of a time when my three kids, ages 2, 8, and 13, had my parents entirely to themselves.
When my mom was dying, hospice came daily and stayed for about ninety minutes. They answered questions, checked what needed to be checked, and did what good professionals do: They made a brutal situation feel slightly less impossible. And then they left. Ninety minutes go fast when you are watching your mother decline. The rest of the day stretches out in a way that does not feel like time so much as exposure. Every sound becomes a data point.
Gayheart has regularly had to battle with insurance companies to make sure that Dane, from whom she has been separated since 2017, receives adequate health services, including round-the-clock nursing care. 'Eric has 24/7 nurses now,' wrote Gayheart, who shares two daughters, Billie, 15, and Georgia, 13, with Dane, 53. The company twice denied her request for full-time nursing care but she said she locked it in and prevailed after filing appeal after appeal.
