The phone rang today. I looked at the caller ID to see my parents’ number. I answered and Dad replied, haltingly and hushed, that they were in trouble. Mom was missing. My mother suffers from an undiagnosed dementia. Numerous appointments at hospitals and consultations with neurologists have returned no answers. Regardless of whether or not we, or medical professionals can name it, this specter gives her a dangerous wanderlust.
They live in one of the many forgotten small towns and villages in America that used to power the industrial might of this country. Now, the area is populated by people stubbornly remaining in a place they settled in and called home. They persist long after the companies they worked for discarded them; first for the southern U.S., then onward, south of the border and into Asia. A portion of them is young with families, but a growing proportion of them are retired or getting close to it. The area now is mostly employed by a dwindling number of small businesses, restaurants, outdoor recreation, retail stores and distribution centers for retail stores. At times, particularly now in summertime, or in the fall when local orchards let you pick your own peck of apples, it is patronized by the well-heeled looking for a trip and to stay at a charming B&B “upstate in the country.” Otherwise, it is left behind, disappearing in the nation’s rearview mirrors, just like those in the departing luxury cars headed back after leisurely stays. Then, gone. Forgotten.
We kids are all grown up and out of the house. None of us are nearby where my parents live. Most of the people I went to school with who went on to college didn’t return either. Why would we? The places that could have possibly employed us in the past all left. We got good educations at our local public school, went away to college and then stayed away to take jobs with better prospects and build lives elsewhere. I often think about this and concede after reflection that our village’s investment in us paid back the worst possible return.
Not only do I not live nearby, the distance is great enough that the fastest I can get to my parents, my best 2020 Lewis Hamilton impersonation notwithstanding, is an hour and a half. Life happens fast and bad news happens at light speed. If bad news concerns infants or elderly relatives, it seems to defy Einstein’s math and move faster than that. No lead foot can offset it.
Mom has taken off before. Dad is the sole caregiver and is doing his best but 24/7 vigilance is as impossible as it is taxing. What about a home health aide, you might ask? Good question. We’ve tried. Even before the pandemic they were difficult to find. With a growing economy in post-pandemic recovery, low unemployment and rising wages, it is nearly impossible. Home health aide agencies pay employees notoriously low, and with wages likely growing faster in other industries, not to mention in other areas, we constantly hit a brick wall. Even though aide pay isn’t world-beating, the end cost to the client is barely affordable, if you can find anyone.
What about moving them to where I am? Prices, both for real estate in general and senior care in particular, are no more affordable where we are. We don’t have better availability here either. I’ve even gamed out moving them into our place but that is also problematic. Our house is two floors and the bedrooms are all upstairs. Mom is ambulatory but less and less steady on her feet. Do I want to move her from a home with everything on the first floor, to somewhere that is strange to her, only for her to possibly get up in the middle of the night and tumble down the stairs? No. My wife and I also both work. If we have the same problem finding an aide here, a more likely prospect than not, it would be Dad watching Mom by himself all over again but in a new area.
Assisted living or full care facility? Forget it. Unless your last name is Gates, Buffett, Koch or you’ve got “gifts” flying in with a Crow, you can’t even get close. (Yes, still pissed about the SCOTUS buyout. Sue me.) My parents worked, scrimped and diligently saved. The companies they worked for didn’t provide pensions. They funded their own retirements with IRA’s and 401k’s, the same thing the rest of us are likely doing. They didn’t receive contribution matches, convertible stock options or any other shimmery disco financial provisions to help counter having no pension. They did their best to build wealth at wages downwardly pressured from exploited labor overseas, getting paid by “piece work” or day-rate equivalents. Piece work, for the uninitiated, is manufacturing work where the employee is, quite literally, paid for each individual piece or part successfully installed or applied. If the piece in question is misapplied, or doesn’t meet quality control standards, it is deducted from the volume of pieces you are paid for. The day-rate is a smoothed average of your quality-control-adjusted piece work production.
They and others like them frantically hustled on the days they were assigned piece work assignments. They all did everything they could to consistently turn out acceptable work at high production rates and ensure that days paid by day-rate weren’t punishingly low. The companies took that work, sold it and made their profits. After many years, these companies considered all their employees’ diligent efforts, occasional injuries, and dedication to churning out their products. They thanked them by moving their operations out of town for cheaper labor. In many cases, including for my parents, it happened decades before they were close to retirement. Retirement savings for them and others were built afterwards on wages paid by a dwindling number of small businesses, restaurants, outdoor recreation, retail stores and distribution centers for retail stores.
This cobbling of jobs, desperately stitched together to save for your golden years creates a clumsy, lumbering Frankenstein monster of a retirement savings. For some it is just a disappointing letdown of what they were trying to build. For others, their saving’s inconsolable rage about being built smaller than savings built by other people, turns on them and kills them.
In other cases, for my parents and a growing number of seniors, their retirement savings is a perverse Goldilocks situation. It’s too small to pay for everything you need. It’s too big to receive government assistance. The size is just right to leave you without much support at all, and every member of the family scrambling to solve the high-stakes puzzle in time, like characters in an episode of 3%.
Our country is in love with the myth of rugged capitalistic individualism. This affair was turbocharged into embarrassingly constant eruptions of PDA since President Ronald Reagan. Business network anchors, industrial titans and their apologist think tanks tout its virtues, breathlessly panting and orgasmic about how it so faithfully serves our nation. They decry anything remotely socialist and fervidly sing from the hymnal of strict adherence to capitalistic tenets without deviation. Yet, efficiency and low prices aren’t everything. Although cost savings can be good, how great are they when they come from the sacrifice of good pay and the ability to build a savings that supports you when you can no longer work?
The following is anathema to the reactionaries on the right but here goes. Social security is socialism. Medicare is socialism. Both are nationally popular and both benefit people throughout our nation. We have used them for nearly a century now to great success, the good of our seniors and their families. If a concept works for and is popular with so many, why have we stopped expanding it?
There was talk of Congressional proposals for nationally funded childcare during the pandemic. It was a hot topic when people’s schools closed and they realized that teachers not only instruct their children but provide daytime childcare too. Where is that proposal now? Nowhere. Working people remain at the razor’s edge if school closes for snow days or holidays, and their children are too young to mind themselves. They either need to take the day off, try to watch them while working from home if that is an option, or leave one arm and one leg at a reputable daycare center in exchange for watching their children. Nationally funded childcare is something that deserves consideration, proposals, passage and funding.
We have another population of people that need daytime care too: senior citizens. Just like childcare, we have very pricy places that provide it. For those who absolutely cannot bear to part with one arm and one leg, it’s out of reach. What about nationally funded senior care? We have a large and growing population of seniors but nowhere near the pace of places becoming available for retired working people. My personal experience is that the growth in available home health aides is also slow. Is it really out of the question to expand the tax base and marginally raise rates for Social Security to achieve funding to provide more care and safe living spaces for our seniors? Is it really preferable to listen to obsolete ravings that government spending is the problem? Should we really heed that advice coming from a lying, B-movie-cast, long-dead hair dye addict who lived off of the government, both as governor and president?
Dad, police, neighbors and volunteers all looked for Mom. She was missing for a little over an hour and it began to rain steadily. They found her behind a neighbor’s house taking cover from the storm. She took off in her slippers, which were nowhere to be found and was crouched on her hands and knees in bare feet. I spoke with an understanding officer who assured me he would try to enroll them in a program I mentioned to Dad before but he wasn’t sure of at the time. It helps initiate a rapid response and uses a tracking bracelet to locate at-risk seniors prone to wandering. The officer suggested installing magnetic alarms, a product I was unaware of for home, that are placed on either side of a door opening. They sound when the connection is broken, signaling the door is ajar. I’ll get and install those too.
Mom always wanted to live out her days in her own house but that is looking more impossible now. The officer mentioned an apartment complex for seniors located on the edge of their village. We may have to relent, recalibrate her dream and move them there instead. We’ve gotten long-term care insurance for ourselves and hope it, and whatever we can save, is enough to take care of us when we can no longer live in our own home. Fingers crossed.
I expect that when we retire, no other solutions will exist or be on the horizon. Some reactionaries keep attacking the social safety net for seniors we already have. Our seniors deserve better. When we become seniors, we will want better too. The richest nation in the history of the world can still do more and it should. All the while, time marches on and Father Time marshals his death march.
OMG. What an ordeal! So glad she was found safe. The tracking bracelet seems like a good option, and the door alarms. Better than an internal-keyed deadlock, which could be a problem in a fire.
I can't get long term care for medical reasons--no restrictions on pre-existing conditions in that line of insurance. What I do have is a house that for reasons having nothing to do with me is worth a fortune (thank you tech industry focused here, for making my taxes pretty much intolerable) Luckily my son lives near by; unluckily my disabled daughter lives with me, so he'll be burdened twice. The only solution right now is to live forever. At least that will let me read all the books I buy.
But I may ultimately use my mom's solution. She had the opposite problem--a side effect of an experimental drug caused basically galloping MS--demyelization in spades. Her mind was just fine; her body just wouldn't respond. My stepfather struggled for the whole time (she went from golfing in December to unable to sit upright or move her hands by May). Finally he had to put her in a nursing home--something she vowed she'd never do. And she died the night she entered it: knowing my mom, it was sheer willpower.
I've always thought of Social Security as insurance, with our "taxes" actually being premium. But thinking of socialism as ownership of the means of production by the workers, it actually fits as socialism. American workers (at least those in work covered by social security) do own their rights to the benefits. The idea that it is some kind of "gift" that can be rescinded by Congress is absurd. It's as if a life insurance company could rescind a fully paid up policy because they just don't want to DO that anymore.
I have a friend in a small town who is struggling with the same problem: a husband who needs more care than she can provide due to her own health issues (his issues are physical, not mental). And her adult daughter is struggling, in a nearby small town, to afford daycare--or rather to FIND it.
Seattle has just instituted a long-term care benefit workers can enroll in regardless of health. I don't know the details because I am not a worker anymore. But if a local community can come up with such a thing, so can a larger entity--state, if not federal.
Best of luck at finding a solution. My thoughts are with you.