AGEING PARENTS:AGEING SELF

My spell checker insists that “ageing” is not a word. But it is a reality, regardless of how one may choose to spell it. My last two days have brought me again face to face with people who age. It began with a wonderful presentation here at La Costa Glen, the Continuing Care Community to which Jane and I moved 4 months ago. Our Executive Director gave us a report of her first ever trip to China and her work there in helping to establish the first ever continuing care community in that country. She reminded us of something that we already know: China faces a tremendous challenge in assisting its citizens through the later years of their life. Because of the one child policy there will soon be less than three people under 60 to support each one person over 60. If each family has only one child then that one child may have to support not only his parents but also 4 grandparents. The multi-generational family under less than one roof may have worked in a rural economy but not in the modern urbanized China. The state guarantees of old age pensions from state run enterprises have disappeared. Meanwhile the life expectancy grows. The Confucian mandate of filial piety is still embedded, especially in the minds of the elderly who still insist that being cared for outside the traditional family home is a sign of failed parenting. Thus even the one large facility for the elderly recently opened is not fully occupied. One consequence is that general hospitals have an overload of patients who have no option but to remain hospitalized.

But one need not go to China. I had only to visit a former neighbor. The story is familiar. The single older male is no longer able to care for himself. He refuses to look at options other than staying in his home. (Even though he does not know how to cook, has never done laundry, and needs regular infusions of saline solutions for his severe Sjogren’s disease. Meanwhile one of his children lives in another state and one (who is in ill health herself) tries to cope. It isn’t working. When I offer alternatives (fortunately there are adequate financial resources) there is a complete refusal to even look at any other options.

As I was on my way to visit the above gentleman a neighbor stopped me. “I am in a bind, Mel,” he tells me. “ My daughter is divorced. She has a mentally retarded child. Her ex- husband just lost his job and so can’t make his child support payments. So I need to send money to my daughter and granddaughter, but here I am on fixed income and goodness knows what has happened to my IRA and other savings plan.” He thought he had planned well for his years of ageing and now he is beginning to wonder how it will all end.

As I reflect on my own ageing, my kids sustain me in my own images of the future. When I recently said something about a decline in assets they responded “”Dad you have assets, 5 big ones. They are your five kids.” And when I stew over the future, Jane has the perfect three-point response “1. God has always taken care of us in the past and God is not about to change. “ 2: If we die young we have enough resources to see us through.” 3. “If we live a long life the market will have turned around and the assets will be there”

And that is good enough for me.