It Helped to Have a Proactive Mom

Eleven years before my Mom died, she sat me and my sisters down for “the talk” about her will and other “days end” planning. She was only 65 at the time, and we kids didn’t want to talk about it, since she was perfectly fine. But she made us do it anyway, in part because she had seen her own Dad die suddenly from a stroke at the age of 86.

Her convictions strengthened further following his passing, as she watched her Mom dramatically decline – 2 years of relatively morbid grieving while we scurried about trying to figure out how to get her to grasp back onto life again, followed by a fall with a hip break that put Grandma into a home for dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. And then there was her continued slow and steady slide into “unknowing-ness” over the course of the next 5 years, when she passed at 93. It was heartbreaking and painful to watch, and it changed us all irrevocably. I realize now that I was extremely fortunate to have a Mom who was super proactive about planning and preparation. I hear from caregivers everyday now for whom that is absolutely not the case.

In the past year, some 35 million American adults (average age 50, with a higher percentage being female) have served as unpaid caregivers for someone aged 50 or older (either a parent or parent-in-law, a spouse or partner or even a relative).  Yet estimates indicate that only 5% of those of us aged 45~65 actually have a proper plan in place with our parents and/ or spouses or partners. In most cases, it takes a “trigger event” (a fall or diagnosis of illness such as cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc.) to force everyone to spring into action. Once it is determined that the loved one will no longer be able to live on their own, some families may have as few as 3~4 days to decide where their loved one will “go” (i.e., following hospital release); in the best of cases, the average length of time for making decisions regarding assisted living or other options is only 2~3 months. There is typically very little time to consider options, with serious – and sometimes controversial – decisions being made under great duress.

In our case, we had both the luxury and the pressure of time; once my Mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, she was given 1.5 years to live. Since we already had a pretty good plan in place, we were easily able to assess the remaining gaps in our plan, and address them. My Mom was very courageous in doing so – as she had been from the very beginning – taking a leadership role in forcing us all to have the difficult and sensitive conversations required.