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Comment by vivekv | Hacker News Reader

I can completely relate to this article. I am 53 and caring for my 78 year old mum with dementia. While financial issues are not a challenge as we don't live in America. The emotional burden is massive and the guilt of not having done enough or to be scared of leaving her alone when we have to step out even for a few hours is palpable. I have full time help at home but guilt is irrational. We hadn't taken a vacation in years until we requested my wife's parents to stay in our home when we went out for 3 days after 4+ years. Amazing support from my wife is what is still giving me the strength to handle this situation.

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My family is in a similar boat, and I'm glad for this article because I think people who are shouldering this work don't feel like they have societal licensure to talk about how it is difficult work.

Death, no matter how far we advance medicine or technology or scientific understanding, is ugly. People don't want public conversations about the emotions caregivers wrestle with, I think, because they don't want to acknowledge how much of the labor is fending off the inevitable or how one feels guilty for not literally preventing the impossible. "She could have had one more day if only I" is real guilt. I spoke to a therapist about this, and her advice to me was that that is the first thing in my journey that I needed to come to terms with... But she couldn't hand me an answer because everybody finds their own answer to that issue.

I think Western moral and societal philosophy encourages us to seek our own answer to that issue, but it does a damn poor job of giving us tools to find it or even warning us that it's coming until it's staring us in the face.

I can't kill death so I can't fix it. I can empathize with you and tell you you're not alone in the struggle, for what that is worth.

"financial issues are not a challenge as we don't live in America"

This is an odd aside. If you can afford to self fund full time help at home in any country then you are relatively well-off.

The person sounds like they are from the UK, so they don't pay anything. I live in the UK, I look after a relative that has help four times a day...I pay nothing, she pays nothing.

You've concluded that paying nothing is a result of living in the UK, but the UK applies a means test and a purpose test to that help: free is only for people with savings below some threshold or for some medical situations.

Sounds very hard, but good for you and your family for doing your best.

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