The Panini Generation

As I left my parent's independent living facility the other day I felt deflated, sad and overwhelmed. Dementia was incrementally hollowing my father out from the inside. Tall, slim and in overall good physical health, the disease was methodically robbing him of his words and memories, his life. My mother, ever his dutiful caregiver, has bent with the weight of this job. Her own fragile emotional health is a grave concern for my sisters and me.

Our lives as daughters were now tilted like a teeter-totter. While for years they had unconditionally loved, sheltered and fed us, homework helped and morally guided, now it was the three of us parenting them. Thank God for my sisters, I thought as I pulled out of the old folks home parking lot, glad to leave the institutional smells and gray carpeted halls behind.

I'd driven the roundtrip from New York to Boston in one day to be back for my kids. There was a third grade school function the next morning and a work commitment.

They call us the sandwich generation and like so many, I am pressed in the white-hot heat between parenting four children and care giving my aging parents. Sandwich? Phooey. I say we are the Panini generation.

I often recall something a friend once said when her aging mother was living with her; she would walk through the door after work and she didn't know who to go to first -- her mother, her child or her husband. Nowhere in that equation was the caregiver herself. She didn't even make the list.

Many of us women today are conducting a high wire balancing act. Those of us who work outside of the home have extra levels, different kinds of pressures. And there is little room for implosion, no margin for error.

Three years ago when my husband was injured in Iraq, my life was already chock full. I ran my own PR and freelance writing business out of the home. I had four kids and a husband who was constantly on the road with his job at ABC News.

My parents, who had carefully crafted their retirement and golden years to "not be a burden" had just moved from their home in La Jolla California to the facility outside of Boston. I was preparing to help with their transition, to head over to Boston and visit, when my husband was critically injured covering the war.

For the next year, as I focused on caring for my family, my parents weren't even in the equation. There was so much to shore up at home. I felt like a mother Robin breaking the worm into five pieces in the nest. My sisters filled the void with my folks repeatedly and came to care for me too when I felt capsized by responsibility. But I felt horribly guilty for failing my own parents in their hour of need. The greatest gift they gave me during that period of time was to NOT come to visit. My mother understood that they would be one more thing for me to care for.

In my new book, Perfectly Imperfect I wrote a chapter in honor of my father. I explored what so many now experience in our Panini generation, mothering young children while simultaneously caring for our parents as they slowly decline and abdicate responsibility. When I shared the manuscript with my family, I removed this chapter before giving it to my mother. I wasn't ready for her to read just how painful it was to witness their journey. I wanted to wall her off from my own feelings of sadness. She was living it every day.

Dignity is such a hallmark of my parent's generation and a disease of the mind is such an undignified way to go.

The Dad who used to run a company now plays ping-pong for a large part of the day with the rapidity and skill of Forrest Gump. He knows that I know and I know that he knows I know that this life sucks. But we don't often use plain speak. I want to reach in through my father's sound body and grab his mind to shake it. I want to tell his brain to stop making him disappear. Stop erasing him, I silently plead.

Dementia to me now is like Botox, bad plastic surgery or men who wax their eyebrows -- all of a sudden I see it everywhere, in so many other families now that I am looking. Or perhaps it is because I am simply of that age.

My twins were born when I was 40, making me one of the oldest living mothers in my elementary school. Their needs are still often physical, my teens require me emotionally, and there is a husband in the equation too. Being with my parents is often taxing, sorrowful. I feel squeezed like a tube of toothpaste. I am scared for my own genetic future.

Mother's Day is on the horizon. I'd like to propose a toast to those of us in the Panini generation. Those of us still enduring Saturday morning cartoons while scheduling the drive to their own parents doctor's appointments.

Seek out those care givers in your life and do something to honor them. Yes, you can give the Hallmark card or the flowers, but go a little further. Look them in the eyes and tell them how much you appreciate and understand what it is they do on daily basis. Maybe it's your mother, your wife, your husband or father, a nurse or neighbor. Watching my own mother, my sisters, the wives and parents of the soldiers who have returned injured from Iraq, you understand that care giving is the ultimate sacrifice, the definition of unconditional love. Even if on a good day it flattens our insides like a ham and cheese Panini.

Comments

[ProgressiveVoice]

To all in this situation: please check to see if there is a local branch of the Family Caregivers Alliance. This is a wonderful organization that provides support to caregivers. If you are not in this situation, for what ever reasons, please check and see if there is a local branch of the FCA and volunteer some time if you can or make a donation.

It has been my belief for a long time that we have extended the human life span beyond it's intended boundaries. That belief was reinforced visiting my mom, week after week, at the nursing home. Recently, I heard that all mammals have a life span equal to about 1 billion heart beats - ALL mammals, including humans. Except that people now have an average life span of about 3 billion heart beats. I am certainly not advocating killing people when they get "too" old, but I do wonder about medical research being done today to extend human life span even more. With so many of the problems in the world today rooted in overpopulation, it seems criminal to add to overpopulation via extended life spans. I know that I will never allow myself to get caught in the gerontology trap, if I can help it - not after seeing the horrible quality of life of those 90 and 100 year olds at the nursing home.

[espressobeans]

I had my first child when I was 25. My mother had me when she was 20. We aren't having this crunch problem. I think for the reasons you are citing, people are delaying marriage and childbirth too long. It's a trade off, of course, but I think things have worked out quite well for me. At 50, with both boys through college and a mother who is 70 and living independently, I'm free as a bird and loving it.

[hlp]

Yay for you.

[foolsage]

Good article. Only one small note: "panini" is plural (sandwiches). The singular is "panino" (sandwich).

[jcsophie]

You have been through a lot of trials and I am sure that there will be more to come. But, something tells me that you will make it through just fine. You are a strong woman that hasn't been dealt anything that you can't handle.

VGinger's posting is an excellent read.

[drofnud]

Is this a relatively recent phenomenon? I don't remember my parents' generation needing to do so much for their parents: my grandparents lived on their own and were fairly independent, as were most of their contemporaries. I'm not complaining - - I'm trying to understand why these situations (and I'm in one myself) are so crushingly difficult... maybe part of the explanation is that we don't have any templates to follow?

[dianatreine]

When my grandparents were aging and sick my mother and her siblings took care of them. When my parents were sick and dying my sisters and I took care of them. We all had children as well. We had a name for that time in our lives as well. It was't "sandwhich" or "panini". We just called it "family".

[AnnfromCA]

I have lived through this stage.

It will end.

[itolduso]

My father's illness took more than a decade to kill him, one piece at a time - it was brutal. I was born in the 50's, a childhood spent dreaming of the Hollywood version of adulthood.­..cocktail parties, dancing & Disney vacations. The reality hit me hard - emergency room visits, long hours of waiting through endless surgeries, intensive care, more waiting in Dr.'s offices, rehab, adult diapers, bloody bandages, wound-drains that need to be emptied (the fluids measured & written down), wheel chairs, and then more emergency room calls...and on and on- an endless cycle of pain & worry & sadness. It wasn't the life I expected, but once I dropped my expectations I found joy. In quiet whispers in the middle of the night, in forced smiles -despite constant pain- (a really good barometer of how much they love you) and in those moments of despair when the whole world is falling apart & everything you thought was important seems lost, and you come face to face with one truth.... every single moment spent with this one that you love is precious, every act to comfort them a gift to yourself. I wouldn't trade one second.

[stateretiree]

I don't have children still at home, but I am enduring the same situation with my Father. He is totally lost to us. The most frustrating for me is the fact that the people who work in these facilities, taking care of our elderly, are some of the most under paid in our country. My Father has wonderful women taking care of him, they show him love and compassion. They genuinely care about him and all the men/women in his unit. I try to make sure that every time I leave after visiting my Father, that I personally thank all of them.

[daffey]

FWIW, it's no less stressful for the men. And I, too, have seen the ravages of Alzheimer's in my family. It is everything it's cracked up to be, and no joke for those who deal with it. And yet, that's life. I wish things were different, and I hate it for my parents, what they have to go through. But it’s the way it is, and we deal with it as best we can.

[vginger]

Well written...
as a Senior myself,I want to say to you, do not despair over the deterioration of your dads and moms physical beings.
You know that you love them...they know you love them...that is enough.

I am experiencing living in a body that no longer does my will...its a b***ch...I assure you.
Perhaps it is a form of a blessing that your dad's mind does not have to be so aware ...that he can slip the bonds of this world just a bit easier for that.
It is a fact of life that our bodies die so that the soul may live again.
So that our true essence is released back to which it came from...I guess thats why faith is so important to so many.
Want some advice?
I'll tell you what I have told my daughter....be happy.
Find ways to be content with the smallest of blessings...know that you are doing good...and give your self a hug now and then.
Don't feel guilty for your parents journey from living life to preparing to leave it.
It is what it is....and somewhere inside of them...they know this.
So be happy, cherish the moment , take long delicious baths while you can still bend your knees to get into the tub:) and know that you are o.k. as are your beloved parents. V.

[Strywever]

What a lovely message. Thank you.

[jcsophie]

Thank you for your post.

[OnTheCusp]

God bless! Thanks for that. I didn't know I needed to hear it, but I did; thank you.

[IowaGirl]

Good luck on your journey. I'm on the same road, including being an older mother of teenagers.

You are most fortunate in having sisters. I wonder how single children with failing parents cope; it must be a terrible burden. Our society is set up badly in so many, many ways. For one thing, the whole country is just too damn big, so we're spread out in ways that make us vulnerable and dependent on nonfamily members in times of our greatest need.

[ChrisRuin]

I guess I'm about to find out. After two car accidents in less than two weeks, my father was finally forced to give up driving and my mom is starting to talk about wanting me to drive down to Florida and move them back up north. Worse yet, she brought up the previously unmentioned intent to find a facility in the city I live in, not the town a mere two hours away where we both resided before they left for Florida, which I would prefer, since they would have other people there to visit them and keep them occupied. Not only am I an only child, but both of my parents were also. That means no aunts, no uncles, no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no nothing. Fortunately I have no children, not the human kind anyway, but I'm also not married or otherwise attached so basically it's all on me. I'm not really looking forward to this...I have my hands full taking care of my own life.

[mayoungkin]

And if you think that's bad, be the breadwinner. All of the pressures, none of the sisterhood's sympathy.

[Strywever]

Being the breadwinner brings certain stresses, and not being the breadwinner brings others. In most families with two parents, both are the breadwinners.

[Nanaama]

Ms. Woodruff, you are a remarkable woman and I salute you. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us.

[goingnow]

Beautifully written. Thank you.