Caring for the Hand that Bites

A quick ask of Google brought up the following data on the state of caregiving today:

An estimated 63 million Americans—or 1 in 4 adults—currently serve as family caregivers, according to the Caregiving in the US 2025 report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. [1, 2]

Key Statistics

• Economic Value: Unpaid family caregivers contribute an estimated 49.5 billion hours of care annually, valued at roughly $1.01 trillion per year. [1]
• Time Commitment: Caregivers spend an average of 27 hours per week providing care, with nearly a quarter providing 40 hours or more per week. [1]
• Tasks: 65% of caregivers assist with at least one Activity of Daily Living (ADL), such as bathing, dressing, or getting in and out of beds. Over 55% handle complex medical or nursing tasks. [1, 2]

Impacts on Caregivers

• Workplace: Roughly 6 in 10 family caregivers are employed, and half of working caregivers experience job disruptions like arriving late or leaving early.
• Financial Strain: Nearly half of caregivers report a negative financial impact, such as taking on debt or using up short-term savings.
• Health: 1 in 5 caregivers rate their physical health as fair or poor, and over 40% report low overall well-being or elevated stress.

As I ‘ve covered in some previous blogs, Sharon has experienced a number of health challenges over the last two years. We’ve had to adjusted our life style and daily routine to accommodate these changes.

While no one plans for this next plateau in the aging process, both Sharon and I have had real life experiences with our own parents. As the average life expectancy for the elderly grows, their care and support has often fallen on the shoulders of their boomer children. We became the sandwich generation, where, on one hand, we had grandchildren to hover over, while at the same time our own parents increasingly demanded more of our attention.

Adding to these new responsibilities/challenges often meant dealing with elderly parents who weren’t able or willing to accept the reality of their situation. Somehow, they felt cheated out of their life and took their frustrations out on their own adult children. I’ve run into more than a couple of friends who have faced just such a dilemma in their lives. They’ve been forced to bear the blunt of their parent’s frustration and resentment about losing their independence, moving out of their home and their ability to control the final direction of their lives. It’s called ‘biting the hand that feeds you.’

But this ‘angry at life’ phenomena isn’t just reserved for the elderly. Over the years I’ve unfortunately run into more than a fair number of these curmudgeons who somehow feel cheated out of what life has handed them. They’re not just in the nursing homes or assisted living facilities. They hang out at the ‘old timers’ coffee shop and the American Legion. They might be a neighbor who doesn’t want kids running across his lawn or complains when the newspaper isn’t on his front steps on time.

My sister and I were lucky. Even at 104, my stepfather never lost his appreciation for the simple things in life like fishing, card-playing and dancing with my mother. My mother fell under the spell of ‘why is this happening to me’ near the end of her life but overall, she continued staying busy as all good Germans were taught to do.

I can think of another exception too. They were the parents of a friend of ours. Even when well into their mid-eighties, they still had time to travel extensively and baby-sit their great grand-children. They loved playing any kind of board games and were the highlight of any party.

I wish I knew what it was that propels some old folks to embrace their twilight years with gracious acceptance while others hold on to past dreams and illusions and curse the process of ‘getting old.’ They seem to be mad at the world and so inexplicably they lash out at those closest to them; often it’s their daughters who only want to help them in their twilight years. It forces their care-givers to choose between letting them make their own life decisions or stepping in when they feel their parents can’t make those basic decisions anymore.

Not surprisingly, I have to believe so much of it originates in their head. My simple theory is based on nothing more than a loose analysis of other folks my age dealing with this issue. I’ve concluded that it is, to a great degree, a generational thing. I think the ‘greatest generation’ generally speaking didn’t interact with their children the same way we do with ours. They didn’t talk as candidly to them as we do nor were they able to see their own children as adults but rather they somehow kept them mentally in that ‘you’re my kid and I’m still your parent’ stage.

Google is replete with many articles dealing with this subject. Some of them are thoughtful and insightful. A couple of good ones are: Ten Tips for Caring for Elderly Parents – US News, The New Old Age Blog-NYTimes.com and Caring for Elderly Parents – Huffington Post.com.

My wife and I now find ourselves a part of that older generation needing a little help along the way. Both our kids have stepped up and while we’re cognoscente of their role in this real-life drama, we don’t want to lose sight of our roles in it either.

With our own parents, we did what we had to do. We accepted the good days and the bad ones too. We listened to the same stories over and over again. We bared the blunt of their complaining and loved them as much as we could. Appreciated or not, it’s what adult children are supposed to do.

Our role in this new-found drama is to be accepting, welcoming and realistic of all our respective roles. That’s what parents and children are supposed to do for one another.

Bob Dylan's Dream

One of the more poignant songs Bob Dylan wrote back in the 60’s was called ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream.’ A surrealistic return of old friends gathered around an old wooden stove in a rustic log cabin deep in the woods. A bunch of buddies sharing stories, swapping lies and pretending to know what lay ahead of them in the future. Nothing could have been furthered from the truth. It’s a great metaphor for a life I’ve come to know and experience.

My C & C (coffee and chat) sessions, conceived a long time ago, have gradually succumbed to the realities of life. Once a vibrant collection of eight-to-ten individuals, as eager to do the vernacular dance as I was, has gradually slipped away to just four faithful followers.

The whole idea of a one-on-one gab sessions started out simply enough. It was the height of Covid and everything in town was shutting down. Sharon and I were leaving Palm Springs, heading home for much of the same thing back in Minnesota.

The year was turning out to be different than any other we had experienced before. It would include new routines like discovering the peace and serenity of a woodland waltz. The flowers were just beginning to bud and the air was warming up. It was a glorious time to be walking in the woods.

Unlike Sharon who was quite comfortable being sequestered in our house this summer because of COVID-19, I was chomping at the bit to ‘get out of Dodge.’ LA Fitness was off limits as were restaurants, the library and other past social gathering spots. Most of all, I missed my cerebral salons with chosen friends.

As it turned out, the best part of that adjusted summer was reacquainting myself with old friends and solidifying friendships with new ones. I called them my ‘coffee and chat’ sessions. Sharon had another name for them; ‘Playdates.’

On my first unofficial C & C, one of my friends and I discovered the solitude of a lakeside pavilion looking over still waters in the crisp early morning air. It was the perfect peaceful setting for great coffee, a tasty snack and thoughtful, insightful, challenging conversations. The surroundings were pretty spectacular too.

For my other friends, the outdoor settings varied from parks, patios, porches, shelters, and other drafty spots with plenty of air circulation and room for our camp chairs spread apart. It worked like a charm so much so that most of us agreed it was a pleasant alternative to the traditional nosey, crowded coffee shops of the past.

Sharon whimsically called them my playdates. I preferred to call them as cerebral salons, catch-up sessions, strengthening the bonds of friendship, or just plain playing it safe in the era of Covid-19. It was enjoying several hours of easy discussion, settling world events, contemplation, soul-sharing thoughts and sharing the warmth of true friendship. Well-earned reminiscing challenged entrenched thinking, clarifying the past, filling in the memory gap.

Then, along with the changing of seasons, I would go back to Palm Springs and the sessions would pause until the following spring. That pattern continued for several years until the realities of life intervened and changes in our respective lives began. One friend changed jobs and with it her flexibility. Another faced a mental crisis. Another succumbed to health issues. Another retired and chose a new career as a caregiver (as a fulltime job), and the list goes on. Each separation was slow and gradual and finally became final.

The remaining C & C veterans remain as dedicated to the cause as I am. But we all know that life has a tendency to throw out some pretty nasty surprise curves sometimes. Whether the remaining four still stick around for a while is anyone’s guess. Here’s Hoping.

In the meantime, I’m trying to replicate some of what I captured that first summer when the early morning sun warmed our camping spots and added to the serenity of our friendship. I’ve put out inquiries to several new acquaintances to entice them to join the party.

True wealth comes in good health and friendships. For a while, I was a very wealthy man. I’m trying to build up my wealth (friends) again.

A Catholic Education

It’s meant more as an inquiry than an indictment. A back-in-time exploration of the cornucopia of rites and rituals that helped shape my thinking as a radical thinker. ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ is just one of many monikers that fit that belief.

My sister and I were reminiscing recently about our Catholic school experiences with the nuns and priests/Christian brothers who taught us. Grade school and high school were both outward educational extensions of the times. They reflected the cultural, social, sexual standards of our parents and grandparents’ generation.

My mother was a devote Catholic so we had little choice in the matter of our education. Beginning in the early fifties, my sister and I attended St. Louis Grade School in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. The old gray relic has long since been torn down but the memories linger in black and white. Attending school there meant a half-hour ride to and from downtown for eight years. First by streetcar with their woven mesh seats and no heat (anyone remember those?) then by city bus.

The school had been started back in the mid-to-late 1800s to educate the poor, indigent children of the primarily French immigrant families coming to St. Paul. By the time, we were attending a lot of the students came from ‘the projects;’ the low-income housing located behind the Capitol.

The nuns were strict and mean and very old school. Unlike some of my unruly classmates I never got smacked across the head or hit with a ruler. Although once in second grade I got busted after sneaking peeks at my Daniel Boone comic book hidden in my desk drawer. The imposing rotund nun made me stand in front of the entire class and throw it into the wastepaper basket. That hurt!

I’ve always assumed my mother got a discount from the nuns because she certainly couldn’t have afforded full tuition on her meager restaurant salary. I’ll give the nuns that. They did have compassion for a single parent with two urchins under tow. There was the free lunch at noon and at times donated clothing that could be picked over after class. Those nuns were tough but classy. It was the Catholic way.

Cretin High School was an all-boys military school (Junior ROTC) and Our Lady of Peace (OLP) an all-girls Catholic school. I’m sure for my mother their most important attribute was their Catholic pedigree. She truly believed that nuns and priests were of the ‘saintly’ order and could do no wrong.

Cretin High School cost four hundred dollars a year paid for out of my paper route plus odd jobs during the summer. Cretin was an ROTC school run by strict Christian Brothers with their no-nonsense approach to life and education. At our fiftieth anniversary we alumni compared jobs and lives; subtly of course. Seems like that educational approach worked pretty well for my comrades and I in our careers as well as in life.

Graduation on May 31^st, 1961 was the launch of my ‘lost years’ although I didn’t know it at the time. It was the beginning of ten years wandering through the wilderness of a young life spiked with bouts of education and life-altering experiences. Back in the sixth grade my belief in Catholicism had been badly wounded by the Baltimore Catechism. Now all those simmering doubts and questions grew in intensity as I experienced real life on yet another level.

For some reason this photo of the quadrangle on the campus of the College of St. Thomas says it all. It’s the winter of 1961 and I’m freezing my ass off cutting across campus. What I remember most of that period were the blustery winter winds sweeping across campus and right through my light jacket. My most poignant college memories don’t cluster around classes or the cafeteria or my girlfriend at the time. It wasn’t the work after school or the hard studying just to keep my grades afloat. Instead, it was the bone-rattling cold that nipped at my fingertips and bit into my ear lobes. Funny how some school memories can do that; lose the true essence of the collegiate experience amid the discomfort of a bitterly cold winter’s day.

But St. Thomas never was a smooth fluid experience for me. Instead, it morphed into two separate life journeys distracted with interruptions from the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Army. By then Catholicism wasn’t even on my radar any more.

The Presidio of San Francisco opened up a whole new world for me. It released possibilities and dreams after my educational collapse at the U of M. The Army proven to be a macho world where I explored life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness all the while trailing other lost souls as I stumbled forth. For two years it carried me around the country and across the border. Then it dumped me back into the welcoming arms of Saint Thomas after an early release.

Thanks to the G.I. Bill there was less stress to find work and more time to write for the school yearbook. I had a nest in my basement at home where I could sequester myself and focus on learning to learn. I got two things from that experience; a college education and one of my first novels called ‘Love in the A Shau.’

Denmark made me a stranger in a strange land. There were new attitudes toward life and love and self. Religion continued to be this strange ritualistic practice performed by my mother but rejected by my colleagues and me.

After Europe, this ex-pat came home and found a dump to live in and a Sunday sanctuary full of song and fellowship. The Newman Center for Catholic Studies had gone hippie and folk-like with its mass, its litany and communal singing. It was a haven of peace and friendship and sharing. It hinted of something wonderful but we never labeled it Catholic…just community.

Susan was there with me to share that skeletal existence, career explorations, the Triangle Bar and the poetry-readings. She was just another road warrior searching for her future as I was searching for mine. We were like two literary hobos riding the rails of life’s jumbled journey but steeled by our dogged determination to succeed. She was like an elixir for my mind on Saturday nights and for my soul on Sunday mornings.

Back then, I was still wading through the flotsam of those early religious years. The Newman Center showed me another side of Christianity. It was love and compassion and caring. It was exploring one’s mind as well as one’s soul. It was questioning and challenging and accepting. It was finding comfort in who we were and the strength to believe we could be more. Then it was all gone. I moved on. Susan moved on. Life carried us both away.

Now years later, I’m trying to fashion stories out of those mixed religious experiences. I have wrapped myself in a coat of many colors and tried to decipher the coded messages from the real ones. What truth, if any, was to be found in the Baltimore Catechism? Were there really mess-ages in all those rambling, repetitive boring eulogies on Sunday morning? Is there a commonality among religions despite repeated claims that each is the only one? I wander through this religious wilderness seeking the truth that, in fact, lies only within me. So, I let my mind dance across the keyboard and stories come to life.

‘Love in the A Shau’ is a trip back in time when a young man was struggling to stay afloat in an Ivy-league world he never knew existed, the tantalizing taste of first love and class differences he let define him.

‘Cafeteria Catholic’ is a play which examines the relationship of an agnostic who finds himself attracted to a devote Catholic. It’s a paradox I find intriguing enough to write a play about it.

‘Frenchy’s Eats’ is a play which examines the dysfunctional and yet poetic relationship between

a man and a woman, an intrusive Catholic church, and a father the author never knew. It’s a complicated play in its rag-tag juxtaposition of elements and explanations that danced between my parents, their divorce and the mysterious Canadian legacy that still lurks far back in my own ancestry.

Because of my Catholic education, I learned the intrinsic value of working hard, helping others, being fair and trying to be a good man. Despite my Catholic education I learned the value of self.

Truth be told, I’m a Christian before I’m a Catholic. But I could just as easily be a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Jew. I’m not a religious person but I believe in religion; whatever flavor people may choose. It’s not a bad combination; a double-edged sword to combat the challenges of life while accepting responsibility for what comes our way.

Perhaps way back then, those wise women, dressed in their penguin attire, did teach me something about religion after all. It’s been a long journey. In retrospect, one could say, I’ve circled back now to where it all started.