When It Comes to Old Age, It’s Time for ‘the Talk’

When it comes to old age, it’s time for ‘the Talk’
 
Here’s a fact; our population is ageing.
 
That doesn’t mean that we’re all getting older. Unfortunately, that’s always been the case, and despite the best efforts and sincerest promises from skincare companies, there’s nothing we can do about it!
 
 
No, it means that the proportion of old people in our population is rising. Thanks to better health care, generally improved standards of living, bigger Quality Street boxes and so on, people are now living longer than ever.
 
While it’s lovely that we all live to a super-ripe age now, and can go hang-gliding for our 80th birthday, it can also cause problems. Because, let’s face it, for most people getting older doesn’t exactly do a lot for one’s general health, mobility and marathon times.
 
And when the elderly can no longer look after themselves properly, somebody else needs to be there to step in, and look after them.
 
Which brings us to the big question; WHO? How? And who is going to pay for it?
(This is three questions, I realise that. Consider it an ask-one-get-two-free kind of a deal. You’re welcome.)
 
Now, considering how hugely important the question of the care of the elderly is, and that it affects every single one of us with living older relatives, and every single one of us who is every going to be old ourselves (which, we hope, is all of us) it turns out that we are incredibly bad at dealing with it.
 
New research by care.com has found that people in the UK are pretty much ignoring the matter altogether, and would rather have That Awkward Conversation with their children about sex, than talk to their parents about their future senior care needs.
 
Over a quarter of British people asked, admitted that they find talking about aging with their parents to be the most difficult conversation they could ever have, more so than discussing money, sex, or who killed Kenny.
OK, not the Kenny bit. But definitely the others.
 
In fact, two in five people asked as part of this survey admitted that they never discuss aging with their parents. At all. Ever.
 
GOOD PLAN! Well done, everybody. Let’s all just stick our heads in the sand and hope that Granny never gets any older.
Because that should work.
 
Or….no. It won’t.
 
Having a plan in place for who is going to care for our relatives – the people who cared for us when we were young, and who deserve to have a good, comfortable and dignified life in their older years – is absolutely essential in every family.
 
Yes, it’s a subject that raises very difficult, uncomfortable things, like our own mortality, illness, death, love, and guilt. But it has to be talked about. Not at the time when it’s needed, but well before that point.
 
Planning financially for the care of the elderly is crucial. It can take many years of careful saving and planning to be in position to provide the care we would like to, when its needed.
 
So is asking what our relatives actually WANT.
We can’t assume that we know. Maybe we think our dad would like to live at home for as long as he can, but really, he wants to be in a care home with other people, running the Over ‘90s Poker Den on Thursday nights. Maybe he wants some company. Maybe he might like to meet a lovely fellow Octogenarian and fall in love again – who knows!
 
Or maybe he wants to come and live . . .with you!
 
Until we ask, we don’t know what people would like in their final years of life.
And it’s much better to ask all this when they are still in good health – physical and mental – than when someone has to make that call for them.
 
This is where the guilt comes in.
 
38% of people asked in the Care.com survey said they would feel guilty if they had to be the one to make the decision for their parent to go into a senior care home. And a third of respondents said they worry that if they did have to make this decision, they would make the wrong choice of how or where their parents are cared for.
 
This is all bonkers, because the guilt and the worry are SO easy to get rid of; you just ASK. Then you know exactly what they want. You can all plan for it together, and when the time comes, you KNOW you’re doing what they would like best.
 
One thing to bear in mind is just how much senior care has improved and changed in recent years, and how many new options are available. It’s not at all a case of ‘sending Granny away’ to a care home, any more.
You can have daily visits from carefully chosen elderly carers, there are part-supervised communities for older people to live in together, and so on.
 
The best thing to do is to pull our heads OUT of the sand, get as informed as possible as early as possible, and then sit down together, and have The Talk.
 
When the time comes, you will be very glad you did.