gone.
4 •
Assistance
Y ou’d think people would have rebelled. You’d think we would have burned the nursing homes to the ground. We haven’t, though, because we find it hard to believe that anything better is possible for when we are so weakened and frail that managing without help is no longer feasible. We haven’t had the imagination for it.
In the main, the family has remained the primary alternative.Your chances of avoiding the nursing home are directly related to the number of children you have, and, according to what little research has been done, having at least one daughter seems to be crucial to the amount of help you will receive. But our greater longevity has coincided with the increased dependence of families on dual incomes, with results that are painful and unhappy for all involved.
Lou Sanders was eighty-eight years old when he and his daughter, Shelley, were confronted with a difficult decision about the future. Up to that point he had managed well. He’d never demanded much from life beyond a few modest pleasures and the company of family and friends. The son of Russian-speakingJewish immigrants from Ukraine, he’d grown up in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood in Boston. In World War II, he served in the air force in the South Pacific, and after returning he married and settled in Lawrence, an industrial town outside Boston. He and his wife, Ruth, had a son and a daughter, and he went into the appliance business with a brother-in-law. Lou was able to buy the family a three-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood and give his children college educations. He and Ruth encountered their share of life’s troubles. Their son, for instance, had serious problems with drugs, alcohol, and money and proved to have bipolar disorder. In his forties, he committed suicide. And the appliance business, which had done well for years, went belly-up when the chain stores came along. At fifty years old, Lou found himself having to start over. Nonetheless, despite his age, lack of experience, and lack of a college education, he was given a new chance as an electronic technician at Raytheon and ended up spending the remainder of his career there. He retired at sixty-seven, having worked the additional two years to get 3 percent extra on his Raytheon pension.
Meanwhile, Ruth developed health issues. A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, survived it, and kept smoking (which Lou couldn’t understand). Three years after Lou retired, she had a stroke that she never wholly recovered from. She became increasingly dependent on him—for transportation, for shopping, for managing the house, for everything. Then she developed a lump under her arm, and a biopsy revealed metastatic cancer. She died in October 1994, at the age of seventy-three. Lou, at seventy-six, became a widower.
Shelley worried for him. She didn’t know how he would get along without Ruth. Caring for Ruth through her decline, however, had forced him to learn to fend for himself, and, although he mourned, he gradually found that he didn’t mind being on hisown. For the next decade, he led a happy, satisfying life. He had a simple routine. He rose early in the morning, fixed himself breakfast, and read the newspaper. He’d take a walk, buy his groceries for the day at the supermarket, and come home to make his lunch. Later in the afternoon, he would go to the town library. It was pretty, light-filled, and quiet, and he’d spend a couple hours reading his favorite magazines and newspapers or burrowing into a thriller. Returning home, he’d read a book he’d checked out or watch a movie or listen to music. A couple of nights a week, he’d play cribbage with one of his neighbors in the building.
“My father developed really interesting friendships,” Shelley said. “He could make friends with anyone.”
One of Lou’s new companions was an Iranian clerk at a video store in town where Lou often stopped in. The clerk, named Bob,
4 •
Assistance
Y ou’d think people would have rebelled. You’d think we would have burned the nursing homes to the ground. We haven’t, though, because we find it hard to believe that anything better is possible for when we are so weakened and frail that managing without help is no longer feasible. We haven’t had the imagination for it.
In the main, the family has remained the primary alternative.Your chances of avoiding the nursing home are directly related to the number of children you have, and, according to what little research has been done, having at least one daughter seems to be crucial to the amount of help you will receive. But our greater longevity has coincided with the increased dependence of families on dual incomes, with results that are painful and unhappy for all involved.
Lou Sanders was eighty-eight years old when he and his daughter, Shelley, were confronted with a difficult decision about the future. Up to that point he had managed well. He’d never demanded much from life beyond a few modest pleasures and the company of family and friends. The son of Russian-speakingJewish immigrants from Ukraine, he’d grown up in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood in Boston. In World War II, he served in the air force in the South Pacific, and after returning he married and settled in Lawrence, an industrial town outside Boston. He and his wife, Ruth, had a son and a daughter, and he went into the appliance business with a brother-in-law. Lou was able to buy the family a three-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood and give his children college educations. He and Ruth encountered their share of life’s troubles. Their son, for instance, had serious problems with drugs, alcohol, and money and proved to have bipolar disorder. In his forties, he committed suicide. And the appliance business, which had done well for years, went belly-up when the chain stores came along. At fifty years old, Lou found himself having to start over. Nonetheless, despite his age, lack of experience, and lack of a college education, he was given a new chance as an electronic technician at Raytheon and ended up spending the remainder of his career there. He retired at sixty-seven, having worked the additional two years to get 3 percent extra on his Raytheon pension.
Meanwhile, Ruth developed health issues. A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, survived it, and kept smoking (which Lou couldn’t understand). Three years after Lou retired, she had a stroke that she never wholly recovered from. She became increasingly dependent on him—for transportation, for shopping, for managing the house, for everything. Then she developed a lump under her arm, and a biopsy revealed metastatic cancer. She died in October 1994, at the age of seventy-three. Lou, at seventy-six, became a widower.
Shelley worried for him. She didn’t know how he would get along without Ruth. Caring for Ruth through her decline, however, had forced him to learn to fend for himself, and, although he mourned, he gradually found that he didn’t mind being on hisown. For the next decade, he led a happy, satisfying life. He had a simple routine. He rose early in the morning, fixed himself breakfast, and read the newspaper. He’d take a walk, buy his groceries for the day at the supermarket, and come home to make his lunch. Later in the afternoon, he would go to the town library. It was pretty, light-filled, and quiet, and he’d spend a couple hours reading his favorite magazines and newspapers or burrowing into a thriller. Returning home, he’d read a book he’d checked out or watch a movie or listen to music. A couple of nights a week, he’d play cribbage with one of his neighbors in the building.
“My father developed really interesting friendships,” Shelley said. “He could make friends with anyone.”
One of Lou’s new companions was an Iranian clerk at a video store in town where Lou often stopped in. The clerk, named Bob,
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