A dutiful daughter tells her story

Out of the blue, a writer sent me her book about her experience of taking over for her elderly mother when she became unable to cope with those “activities of daily living” (ADLs) we all take for granted…until we can’t. Part memoir, part handbook for other adult children, Nine Realities of Caring for an Elderly Parent jolted me into a sneak preview of what my end of life might be like.

With significant differences. 

Not all of us at this stage of life will be blessed with a devoted daughter like the author, Stefania Shaffer. Remarkably,  Shaffer zooms in to the task after being completely estranged from her mother, and misjudged by her, for years.  Suddenly offered an olive branch, she goes to visit, where she is confronted with a mother in a worn blue bathrobe going blind from macular degeneration and in the habit of falling, amidst the utter chaos and neglect of what had been her childhood home, a situation become so derelict that she will feel required to leave her own life and move back home to provide care.

Without blinking, without second thoughts, and with no resentment, she does it -- and she’s rewarded, by falling in love with the handsome roofer who comes to fix the roof.

It reads like a fairy tale; and maybe it is. A lot is left out of this halcyon story, and one suspects that those details that might fill out the story are left on the same shelf as the financial information she chooses to reference only obliquely, substituting “trees” for dollar amounts. But luckily at every stage there is money to do what needs to be done, from replacing the wall-to-wall carpets to hiring a full time hospice caregiver.

But even lacking those and other tender details of how their relationship was repaired and sustained during these difficult final years, the book manages to convey a lot of useful information set in a flowing and readable narrative.

Introducing her story, Shaffer outlines the growing need for care of older adults, the costs of professional care and the rising number of Americans (nearly ten million in 2011) trying to provide it themselves. Then she lists the qualities needed by the family caregiver:  “mobile enough to relocate or ability to provide extra bedroom and bath space, trustworthy, alert, non-drug user, non smoker, reliable, observant, savvy, organized, multi-tasker, patient, creative cook, dietitian, pharmacist, nurse, non-alarmist, soother, committed, non-traveler…” and more. 

It’s a hard bill to fill!

Even now, having read the whole thing and put it down for a week while attending to other projects, I, a 72-year-old reasonably healthy mother feel a shudder of fear as I take another look at this warm hearted, reasonable and capable depiction of an experience I hope I will never live to see. But who can know how it all may end? We try our best, faithfully taking the daily walk, going to swimming and yoga classes, eating as much fresh produce as the budget will allow… Trying to maintain some form of social life, staying mentally active, even holding a job… all the good things we see on NPT’s “Next Avenue” or AARP’s “Life Reimagined,” everything designed to counteract the negative images we carry about old age, and all to the good, but in the end, for most of us, there’s that lingering decline in which care is the ultimate concern – the person to care, and the money to provide for it. So many elders are lacking in one or both. The unwillingness or certainly reluctance of so many of our adult children to attend to the needs of aging parents, even before the situation attains this catastrophic level, though uncounted, appears to be fairly widespread; and with so many pressures and demands on their time, this lack of attention is not entirely surprising. The failure of many boomers to provide financially for their old age is another factor; they (I should say, we!) can’t provide properly for our own care, and, let’s face it, our children’s motivation is somewhat reduced by their awareness that they often cannot expect a significant reward for the enormous time and energy commitment that will be demanded of them.

All around, it’s a complex, daunting picture with no solution in sight. Reading about the wonderful devotion and skill of Stefania Shaffer, we can only pray that we may be blessed with something approximating the loving care her mother received – despite their estrangement – and that caregiving families generally will receive more support from government funded social programs than they are enjoying now. 

It’s a difficult road, but caring has its rewards for the giver, and those of us forced to depend on it can learn to be sweet, as Shaffer’s mother was, thanking Stefania every single day and always telling her how wonderful she was. In this “love affair of a different kind,” despite the labor and the stress, the intimacy of caregiving can be a gift to us in a society aching from isolation, loneliness, hopelessness and lack of purpose. Here at the difficult end of life, we may find the tenderness and meaning we crave.