The last six months have been fraught for my friend, and not just because Sarah’s mother, a widow, did not understand why the girl had to leave her town, friends, country club and the home where she as well as her husband had raised their four children. It was also trying simply because all of the responsibility fell on Sarah’s shoulders: the clearing and selling of the home, the search for a free spot in a nursing home, and the heart-rending transition associated with moving her mother into a strange environment.
But then, on one of Sarah’s near-daily visits to see her mother at her new assisted-living apartment, a health professional stopped Sarah in the hallway.
“Are you an only child or do you possess O. S. S. s? ” she asked, having witnessed all that Danny had been doing for her mother’s relocation. And then, sensing Sarah was not familiar with the actual acronym, added, “I’m talking about ‘out of state siblings, ’ the siblings who don’t help very much. ”
In fact , Sarah has two O. H. S. s, but she also had one brother living nearby. However busy with work and his own family, her sibling had been offering minimal assistance with their mother.
“There is one child in every family, ” the health professional said, patting Sarah on the back. “We see that here, ” she additional. “It is often out of sight, out of mind for the others, ” she murmured, slipping away.
Before I moved back to the Midwest four years ago as well as into my parents’ home with my own family, I was not just the “out of state sibling, ” but the “out of country” sibling, having resided overseas for 20 years. While I was running around Europe and the Middle East, the older sister, Liz, living in the same town as my parents, was the one who ensured their medical insurance was up-to-date, the garden was trimmed, the cars were working and the dining room chairs filled each holiday.
During that time, both of my parents experienced their own first serious health issues. Though I flew back each time, it was just to keep a hand before and after the surgery and help with a bit of cooking and cleansing before I flew off again.
It was a relief to me, with our 2 brothers living out of state, that Liz was here full time. My husband, Daniel, and I saw a future in which my unmarried, childless sister would take care of mother and father, allowing us to live out our working days all around the globe.
But then, our living changed in a matter of weeks. When we needed to leave our most recent posting in To the north Africa quickly, the easiest place for us to land with our three children had been my parents’ home.
And then suddenly, I became that child.
Our residing together was, at first, primarily a financial decision. As journalists, Daniel and I had been forced to go from being seasoned international correspondents to being local press outsiders. At the same time, my father, a real estate developer, was watching his business suffer through the actual recession. And then there was my older brother, Greg, who had just been let it go from his job in Chicago.
We took up residence in the short term because it had been cheaper in the long run as all of us scrambled to make ends meet. But a year later, once the worst was over and we had to re-evaluate our living arrangement, it nevertheless made sense to us - it was truly far more economical in these hard times for all of us to share costs than to divide them.
The only problem with buying the parents’ home with them still in it was that it felt as if I was deciding on be that child/caregiver forever. While my older sister stops by to go to now and then, she is understandably less involved in my parents’ lives than she once was. She knows I am here to check on them daily, both mentally and actually. And while my older brother lives here, too, his nurturing skills like a long-term bachelor are limited to watching sports with my son, taking out the actual trash and fixing cracks in the ceiling.
And then there is my younger sibling who lives out of state. I can hardly blame him for having a work and family far away; he needs to make a living, of course. But the result is he could be of little practical help to us.
For your moment, my mom, 80, and my dad, 83, are in good health, but there is a great deal that goes into keeping them that way. The biggest part of that equation is having all of them reside for as long as possible in the house they love, surrounded by the people they love, and high spirits as their aches and pains increase and their number of friends decrease. But it may also be exhausting mentally to be the constant cheerleader who keeps the team from giving up within the field.
But what tires me the most is thinking about the future. When things proceed from bad to worse for my parents, I don’t know if I will want to become “that child” anymore. But , I fear, I may not have a choice - and never because my siblings won’t help, but because it is ingrained in my nature.
These days realize I picked myself for this long-term job the moment we moved in. And somewhere along the line, my friend Sarah did, too.
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