I was considering retiring after I turned 80, but the cost of geriatric care is high. My sister and ex-wife both require care. My sister is in full-time memory care, and my ex-wife has needed more care over the past two years after a dementia diagnosis, so I decided to keep working. I'm trying to help support them, whether it's paying the care facility directly or paying them to provide some support or outside nurses.
My mother and late father sold vintage and secondhand items on auction sites for years to supplement their household budget. I taught my father to list online many years ago. I work two jobs and also freelance. I'm unmarried, in my 50s, live a half-hour drive away from the family home, and also commute one hour each way during the week. My 58-year-old brother lives with Mom. He was laid off just before the pandemic
I thought it may have been Mom's cheesy potatoes. It was Easter, and in between doing a million things, she added too much butter. When she first pulled the pan from the oven, a thick layer of oil wriggled at the top. My brother, father and I playfully jabbed at it with our fingers, giggling as Mom rolled her eyes and scraped the oil off into the trash before dropping it on the table with an annoyed thump.
One day at lunchtime, my dad was driving home from playing tennis with some friends and felt an unusual sensation - hunger. A McDonald's just north of our town had opened up several years before, but no one in our family had ever stopped there. Now, as he saw the restaurant's giant yellow M glinting in the sun ahead of him, Daddy felt a strangely powerful urge to stop.
For years, Mitul Desai felt that the best way to deal with his little brother's schizophrenia was to avoid talking about it. His brother had become angry and withdrawn during his first year in college in 1996, and then started hearing and seeing things that weren't there. Over four years doctors told the family he had everything from alcoholism to bipolar disorder, until finally he got the correct diagnosis.
As Teena Punjwani and Deepak Nasta take stock of the last year, they sigh. "I feel like I've lived too many lifetimes in this one lifetime," Punjwani said. The San Jose couple's life together was thrown into chaos in February with a heartbreaking diagnosis: their 5-year-old son, Jayaan, had brain cancer. His parents had sensed that something was off last winter, when Jayaan's writing skills nosedived at preschool and he mysteriously lost balance on the left side of his body.
Spurred by her mother's diagnosis, she had her first mammogram a couple days earlier, and it had turned up a suspicious spot. Now she needed a second, diagnostic mammogram, and likely a biopsy. She found herself walking a surreal sort of tightrope, caught between relief that her mother's treatment was over and fear that she might soon be starting her own.
It's been seven years since we were with my family on Christmas Day. Two of those years we were hunkered down at home with a newborn/about to give birth. The other five years we have spent with my husband's family. My father-in-law has been terminally ill for 12 years, and it's a miracle that he has lived this long. We've truly thought that every year has been his last Christmas, but this year, I really think it's his last.
In January of this year, I had to have cervical spine surgery. Ironically, I wasn't worried as much about the surgery as I was about the post-surgery fallout. For several weeks post-op, I wouldn't be able to drive (due to not being able to turn my neck), so I was trying to figure out how to get my kids to school, sports, clubs, and their various activities.
Dozens of changes were quietly made this year to the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, which was first released in 2022 after years of work by government officials and community stakeholders. An objective to "prioritize efforts to advance equity for unserved and underserved populations of caregivers" was removed entirely, as was a section noting that the challenges of family caregiving are not equally distributed.
At age 43, Dawnita Brown made a life-changing pivot. She took leave from her secure government job, winnowed down her possessions, resolved her financial responsibilities, and in 2016, signed up for the Peace Corps. Volunteering in Eswatini was "amazing," she says, so much so that she planned to extend her time abroad in a paid position with the Peace Corps after her service ended.
I've been a single mom for just over five years. My daughter's dad and I separated when she was six months old, and since then, I've dedicated my life completely to her. I haven't dated, traveled, or done pretty much anything "for me." Despite having joint custody, our daughter refused to sleep over at her dad's place, and they only saw each other once a week, during the day.
But through Facebook groups and GoFundMe pages, I began to connect with families going through similar ordeals. Despite the pain and relentless demands of their situations, many were open and generous with their time. That was especially true of Jessica Pittizola Jarrett and her son, John-Bryan, who goes by JB and suffered an anoxic brain injury and other complications after overdosing on fentanyl in September 2020.
His parents are Baby Boomers who, he says, exhausted their funds five years ago - although they only told him when they were on the brink of homelessness. Because of health problems and age-related constraints that make work impossible, the user stepped in to support them and to manage their finances. He persuaded them to sell their large, debt-laden home (despite their request that he simply continue paying their mortgage). Now they live in a modest cottage near him so he can regularly assist them.
Melinda Turner starts her day at 3:30 a.m., and within 30 minutes, wakes her 8-year-old daughter for school. She packs their bags and by 5 a.m., heads out to drop her child at an in-home day care - one of the few providers in her area that opens before dawn. Turner, a single mother, then drives to her early shift at a manufacturing job.
They had just talked the day before, Skyy Clark and his father having one of their usual conversations about life, basketball and whatever else popped into their minds. Early the next morning, around 6, Skyy got a call from one of his brothers. It was the sort of news no one can fully prepare for, no matter the circumstances, no matter how much one might have already considered the possibility of hearing those awful words. "Dad's gone."
My 34-year-old daughter, Samantha, has already chosen the song she'll perform at her twin brother, Matt's, wedding in May next year. She's refining her version of Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings." Not that it needs refining: it was the highlight of her solo concert, "Daring to Dream," last month. The event was a sell-out, and there was rapturous applause. The crowd's appreciation of Samantha made me prouder than ever.
The call came around 3 a.m. "Your mum had a stroke," I heard my cousin in India say. I crumpled to the floor. As I sat sobbing, he explained that she was in surgery and still critical. My mind swam with disbelief. Less than 24 hours ago, I had spoken to her over video chat. She'd been in high spirits singing Old MacDonald to her new grandson our daily morning ritual since his birth that April.
