Who is caring for the caregivers?

“Long-distance caregiving was going to be the end of me,” she says. Podniarski finally convinced her mom to move from her small town to a private assisted-living facility near Podniarski’s home in Montreal. And she promised that if her mom moved, she’d visit her every day. So now Podniarski, who is divorced and has a senior management position in an insurance company, visits her mom every evening, manages her deteriorating health, does her laundry and take her our on weekends.

“I’m really proud of her that she made the move and has adjusted,” she says. “I told her that if she made this move, it would prolong her life – and it has.” But at the same time, she’s resentful of the amount of time her mom needs. When she made her promise of a daily visit, she expected to do it for a few months until her mother settled in, but it’s now going into her second year. Her mom understands when she tells her she can’t come occasionally, but she knows her visit is the bright spot in her mom’s day. Recently, Podniarski refused an extended business trip that would have taken her to Asia for two weeks. “I know she’s being cared for, but she would really miss me,” she says.

When Podniarski’s mother was in her 60s as Podniarski is now, she and her husband enjoyed their retirement travelling the world. Free of responsibility for either children or elders, “they had the time of their lives,” Podniarski says. “Sometimes I want to remind my mother of that.”

It’s not all negative. Podniarski is enjoying the time she spends with her mom and is happy she can make such a difference in her final years. “My goal is to make sure that my mother ends her last years as comfortably and happily as possible,” she says. Never close before, they have now forged a much stronger relationship. Recently, her mom told her a family secret that she’d never shared with anyone. And they have lots of laughs at the role reversal that has occurred between them. Podniarski often has to remind her mother to take her cane with her or to use her walker. She’ll say, “Mom, it’s for your own good,” because that’s what her mom said so often to her when she was growing up.

Boomers who are currently caring for frail elderly parents may feel overburdened, but that’s nothing to how their kids will feel when it becomes their turn, says Ingrid Connidis, professor of sociology at University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. She points out that the large number of boomers means the responsibility is shared. “Right now, we have a large cohort looking after a small one.” But with their declining birth rate, boomers have fewer offspring. Anyone who really doesn’t want to be a burden to their kids in 20 years needs to plan ahead how to negotiate their final years.

* Names have been changed

As the needs of elderly parents have increased, companies have sprung up to offer support to caregivers. Here’s advice from two of them