Ep 68: Living in Crisis

Folks, on this episode, I want to talk to you guys about something that's the opposite of plan. Something that happened with my wife, myself, and our two small children when everything changed in our life in the summer of 2005.

So I talk all the time about this four letter word PLAN and really trying to encourage people to plan as older loved ones, and spouses start aging, because at some point, most of us are going to need care. OK, so let's say you don't plan- let's look at my life. And I know we wound up with all four (parents), but let's talk about one. 

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So this started with my in laws before it moved to my parents, and it started with one of my in law. The first call that we got, and again I was working still, I'm working in software, living in California, working in Silicon Valley and have a pretty darn decent commute both ways. My wife running the business out of our home. We had the two small kids, so add in that they have homework, they had school, they have a normal life- Our son, 11 years old at the time, heavily involved in sports at that point, playing baseball and as he got to high school, football entered his life as well. A lot of practice with baseball, a lot of tournaments he was involved in. Our daughter, seven years old, really liked to dance and belonged to a dance studio. They had competitions, they were traveling, going to competitions. This is all beyond school, homework, et cetera. That's our life.

We were the typical sandwich generation. We find out that one of our older loved ones isn't doing well. Pretty ill. So all of a sudden, without a plan, we have to start making adjustments. OK, well, my wife and I talk, she's really much better at hands-on care than I am. I'm probably going to try, obviously, keep working, going to work every day trying to make money to support the family and the things that we're doing. Then we start realizing I'm 40 miles away. She's also 40 miles away at her parents home. Both of our kids don't drive. These are the things, just normal things, in life that you have to figure out.

• OK, who's gonna pick them up?
  
• Who's gonna get our son to baseball practice?
  
• Who's going to get our daughter to her dance studio?
  
• Who's going to get them home from there?
  
• I'm not home most nights till 6-630, maybe later, from work. My wife, based on the schedule with her mom, doctor's appointments, just being with her in the home, and also she faced traffic driving home, what time is she going to be home? So now we're trying to figure out who's going to manage pick up our kids for us?

And that's just about every day. And there were many, many nights when my wife would get a phone call from her parents home. They weren't doing well. One was taking care of the other and they were both in their 80s and that was a real struggle. They needed her to come down. She hangs up, looks at me, and says "I gotta go. I know you got to get to work in the morning, and the kids got to get to school, and I got to go. It's 10:30-11:00 at night, I'm going to be staying the night at my parents and we just have to figure it out."

That's what happens when there's no plan. You haven't thought about this, you haven't thought about trying to conduct a normal life and how is your son going to get here and your daughter is going to get there and get picked up and get fed and managed. And I'm not going to be home until 6, 6:30, 7 o'clock at night and she maybe even later. And then guess what? It would happen again, and again. And again. This is 2005. I think the first smartphones came out in '07, if I'm right, there was really minimal texting. So I'm trying to tell people, somehow at 11:00 at night, that I'm probably going to be late for work in the morning. What if I had appointments, so on and so forth. Because I got to get my kids to school, I can't drop them off at 5:30 in the morning at school. I mean, come on. This is the life we were living.

Then all of a sudden it became both of her parents. And things got harder and there were more nights where she needed to spend the night there or maybe she was there all day and hadn't even come back. I'm getting home at six 6, 6:30, 7:00 at night, and somehow, a wonderful neighbor, a friend, has brought our kids home. Our son is 11- kind of in that borderline age of being OK to be home with his sister. We're kind of gambling about that because what else are we going to do? Unless there was another neighbor that was going to go watch them for maybe a couple hours until I get home. I mean, this is real. This is life. This is what we were living in. Now all of a sudden, in addition to the doctor's appointments for one of our in-laws, now all of a sudden there were more doctors appointments, as the other one got ill as well. And now we're just trying to figure all this out. I've talked about, that it's like they're sitting, the first one is in the first car in a roller coaster, the second is in the second car on the roller coaster, and we're on that third car, my wife, two kids, and myself. We were trying to figure out:

• OK how do we hang on?
  
• How do we not fall out?
  
• Where are we going?
  

Going uphill on that roller coaster before it starts going really fast downhill. That was our life. I'm I'm trying to get to work every day. OK, I'm exhausted. I'm up really late. I'm up early. I can see the stress and pressure on our kids. Where's mom? When's Mom coming home? How are their grandparents doing? And we're not even talking about my parents yet. These are just the first 2, of all four. Everything they're going through, and you can see it starting to affect them at school, they're being chauffeured around, driven around. Asking one neighbor, one friend to pick them home, take them to baseball, take them to dance, take them, pick them up after school, bring them home. These are the little things that are part of life.

So if you do sit down and plan? What if something does happen? I'm making this up- my mom's 82, my dad's 84 and they're starting to show some signs of slowing down. What if it's you and a spouse? You got kids, maybe they're not driving like our, maybe they're a little bit older, but you start figuring out the rules that each one can play. Maybe you're talking to some neighbors and friends, letting them know "we're starting to see some changes in our parents. I don't know what we're going to do if something happens to them, but we may need some help. Is that going to be OK?" You know, when kids are younger, maybe there's a carpool, and maybe there's multiple people in the neighborhood that are part of the carpool and you have a schedule and the whole thing. Maybe you if you have the ability to plan, maybe some sort of schedule might have been put together to help with after school picked up, going to baseball, going to dance, coming home, so on and so forth. We didn't do that. Now we're trying to punt and figure it out. Every single day. It's hard. And the weekends come. There were some weekends I had to go to work. Traffic was a little better, but I had to go to work and my wife most likely was at her parents house. And I have an 11 year old and seven-year old- I'm not going to leave home all day if I'm at work 5, 6, 7 hours like I was. And sometimes I was there Saturdays and Sundays because I had to be.

• What are we going to do?
  
• How are we going to figure this out?
  
• Who's going to help us out?
  

All this stuff we never thought about, all the stuff I'm talking about now, because I'm really hoping that as you listen to this and pass this on to other folks in your life, yeah. Do you know when moms going to fall? Do you know when dad's going to get ill? No. But maybe you're starting to see signs and you realize they're changing. They don't walk like they used to. They're having, and they've had, some illness problems. And maybe it's getting worse.

• So why not try and get ahead of it?
  
• Why not try and have that plan? 
  If you have, maybe it's just you and a partner, you and a spouse. And that's all you're dealing with. But there are so many millions of people in this country where children are involved as well, and yet maybe not everybody has them under driving age. That's certainly going to help, especially if there's an older one and maybe a younger one, and the older one can pick the younger one up and so on and so forth.
  
• A plan helps to know what you're doing. We talk about being in crisis. I mean, our life was kind of a living crisis every day. OK, maybe this given night my wife wasn't going to have to go to. Guess what? The phone rings again. They need their help. It's 10:30 11, 11:30, 12:00 at night. She's literally picking up, grabbing the keys, talking to me briefly, kissing the kids, and leaving. Constant. Crisis.
  

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And then let's talk about something I talk about all the time, OK? You love your parents. They don't live close to you. This is going on because there was no plan, there hasn't been saving for care in the home, or maybe moving them to some community, and they are in their home with one struggling to take care of the other and now both of them aren't doing well. What are you going to do?

I'm not, I'm not trying to be the down person here. This is reality. You know, we are living longer. We talk about this, through medication and medicine, we're living longer than we used to. The last loved one that passed away in our life was 96. I have met countless people over 100 years of age. But then people are falling, people are getting ill, people are getting early onset dementia at a much younger age. I'm talking to colleagues around the country that are dealing with people that need care 60s, 70s, and there's a good chance in that family the adult children still have school age children that aren't driving. Could be you.

Folks, I just want you to think about this:

• Do you want to constantly live in crisis like we did in our house?
  I can tell you from personal experience, it's not fun. And all these years later, there's still an affect hanging over our family. It was rough. Yeah, 14 years, that's all four parents. It was rough.
  
• And I really try to tell people with some sort of plan it will be easier. It will never be easy, but it will be easier.
• And what are you going to do if you have young children like that? Maybe your parents had you later in life, nd all of a sudden they fall, they get sick, or both happens. How are you still going to go to work, get a paycheck? Support your family? Take care of them. Take care of the kids. Take care of yourself.

It's a lot.

Folks, if you want to get in touch with me, have comments, questions email me at [email protected]

Until we talk again. Have yourself an awesome day.