There's a commercial that's been running recently. Some dad talking to his daughter about him and her mother making plans for long-term health care (a wise decision). But, the daughter responds by saying, "That's good. Mike's parents (her husband) didn't have a plan and now it's on us."
Everytime I hear that commercial, I want to smack her. That's the GenX attitude for you.
"There's a commercial that's been running recently. Some dad talking to his daughter about him and her mother making plans for long-term health care (a wise decision). But, the daughter responds by saying, "That's good. Mike's parents (her husband) didn't have a plan and now it's on us."
Yeah, isn't that annoying. My wife's folks are lucky. They have no problem with the health care side, between her Dad's insurance and Medicare. They're OK, financially, at least for the forseeable future.
But...that's not the whole thing. Her Dad has had a couple of strokes...not completely debilitating, but he can't really walk unassisted any longer. He is also just about blind from macular degeneration. He has a permanent urinary catheter.
Had he gone into a nursing home two years ago, as the doctors recommended, he'd be dead now. His wife is only 77, and healthy, so she does most of his care, and their insurance handles health aides coming in for a couple hours a day.
Since my wife and I are here, we take care of getting him to and from doctor appointments. I built a ramp to help get him to and from the car, and I drive him and help him in and out of offices and the like.
My wife spends about half the day over there, with her laptop, so she can work. That helps a lot, and her mom can get out and shop, etc.
I'm the cook in our family, and I just cook for four for evening meals. Sometimes, we take them over and her mom and dad eat them by themselves. Other nights, I go over there and prepare meals for all of us and we sit around and watch TV until it's her dad's bedtime, then we help get him into bed, and my wife and I head home.
We're on call all the time, and there's always one of us who is able to dash over there, if necessary. That happens once a week or so.
We bought a house just 5 minutes away, so it's not hard. I take care of the normal household repairs and the like, but they live in a condo, so all the other stuff is taken care of.
It's a lot of work, but they're our parents. They changed our diapers, cleaned up our vomit, and saw us through our adolescence. For Pete's sake, we can help them through their waning years, I'd think.
My parents are still alive, too, and living in California. My sister and brother live in the same town there, so they're handling this stuff on their end.
It's what family values mean. This Gen-X whining is really, really annoying.