Do the elderly always end up alone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think many (not all) families didn't deal with this to the extent we are seeing now. People are living longer. My grandparents all died when I was in middle school. So people weren't giving it too much thought. Now, my parents' generation is living longer, but many don't have the means to pay for elder care. Or pay to move. Pay to downsize, since even a smaller place frequently more expensive than the old pile.

I am now in the process of dealing with my parents and siblings in-laws deal with elder issues. It is so sad to watch, both for them, and for the thought that thesis what is ahead.

I feel for you, OP. But the PP's advice of grieving, then get busy living and making these years the best they can be, resonated with me.

The oldest generation is now living so long that the "kids" who are expected to be able to take care of them are not spring chickens themselves. My brother is in his sixties and recently had some kind of back operation. Guess who can no longer help his 90 year old mother in and out of bed and into the car, up and down the stairs, etc. We can foresee a scenario in which our parents live to their late 90's and we are in our seventies, and instead of caring for ourselves we are caring for an even older generation. Newsflash: There are people in their seventies with significant health issues who probably shouldn't be driving, who suffer from cataracts, who struggle driving at night, etc. And yet we will be the caregivers for people in their nineties! When do WE get to be old and looked after?

Well if you are watching this happen to the generation before you, plan now.

Cancer caused by toxins in the environment, global climate change catastrophes, unchecked pandemics, unvaxxed children dying and human unrest will cull the herd.

[Anonymous]

I’ve had three friends in their early 60s die recently from aggressive cancers. All fit and looking forward to enjoying their retirements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
In what universe has a parent “provided nothing” to the children they raised?

And your little transactional take on how families work makes no mention of love or responsibility.

What a sad, hallow human you must be.

Oh, do I have bad news for you! Your whole life is a representation of transactions of one kind or the other. In fact elder care itself is based on a social contract between generations, where everybody contributes to raising the children and in return they get taken care of when old.

You don't seem to understand this. I'm not surprised, because you probably have no experience with a multigenerational household. The point is, taking care of minors is not the achievement you seem to think it is, especially the type of care now where kids go from daycares to all-day schools. You're literally obliged to provide this care. In a society where the young take care of the old, the old contribute to the ADULT children. It includes the transfer of (most) wealth before they die (yes, material as well as knowledge, remember when people considered the old wise?). It also includes the transfer of POWER. In a multigenerational household the head of household is the adult child, not the old. So this entitles considering your adult kids actual adults (not constant critique), getting along with your adult children (especially daughter-in-law, who in most cases does elder care), contributing ACTIVELY to childrearing (day-to-day when living in a multigenerational household and before that, remember when kids used to spend their summers at grandma's?), teaching the adult kids all necessary knowledge and provide finances to actually adult (no failure to launch, women knew how to cook and take care of the house, men knew household fixes, this IN ADDITION to providing knowledge/finances for jobs), and often, surprise-surprise -- arranged marriages, because a marriage of your son or daughter into another respectable family provided stable lifelong households. Are you perhaps surprised why family matriarch used to have such influence on their kids finding spouses? Does it make sense now?

In other words, elder care is not some kind of lotto win at the end of your life. It's a culmination of your contribution to your own family OVER your lifetime. So it's not that the young are not doing their part (why are my adult kids not taking care of meeeee, not moving in with meeeee, not doing what I want!), it's that the current old in most cases have dropped their rope. You must be one of them.

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You are exhausting.