It’s 3 a.m. and I’m woken from a sound sleep. Someone is calling for help. In a panic, I rouse my husband and we race downstairs. My father-in-law has fallen. Again.
That was our life for the better part of a year.
Living Between Two Generations That Need You
For that year, my husband and I were the primary caregivers for his ailing father, who was living with us.
Our kids needed us. Work needed us. The laundry needed us. The bills needed us. The kitchen needed us. My mother-in-law needed us. My father-in-law needed us.
My father-in-law was in constant pain and often moaned loudly.
Eventually, the lines between reality and imagination began to blur, and we started experiencing auditory pareidolia—a fancy way of saying we would hear him moaning (or calling for us) even when he wasn’t, most often when we were trying to fall asleep.
Countless times, I sat bolt upright, eyes wide, just listening. Often, I got out of bed and stood in the hallway, trying to prove to myself the sound was in my head.
We were constantly on high alert, stretched paper-thin—mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted.
The Hidden Emotional Toll of Caregiving
According to the Pew Research Center, about half of people in midlife are sandwiched between an aging parent and their children. The research discusses the financial burden of support; less talked about is the physical, mental, and emotional toll.
I understand this on a visceral level.
What I didn’t understand before living it is how much of this burden quietly falls on families—and often on women. Not because they’re better suited for it, but because somewhere along the way, it became expected.
I didn’t understand how little structural support exists for aging adults, even for those who served our country. My father-in-law was in the Navy. It didn’t translate into the kind of care you might assume it would.
I didn’t understand that in order to access more help, we would be advised to get rid of the life insurance policy he had paid into for decades—because it counted as an asset and stood in the way of qualifying for Medicaid.
What Hospice at Home Really Means
I didn’t understand that when he chose hospice at home, what that really meant was that we became the care team—the ones managing medications, tracking symptoms, coordinating schedules, and filling in the gaps between all-too-brief visits.
And the hospice nurses and aides who did come to our home were remarkable—skilled, grounded, and compassionate in a way that is truly special. Even as the gaps in care were impossible to ignore, their guidance carried us through some of the hardest moments.
I used to think support systems existed.
What I see now is how much of it rests on the people inside the home. I honestly don’t know how we would have managed—financially or otherwise—if I didn’t work from home full-time and my husband didn’t work from home part-time.
Life After Caregiving and Grief
My father-in-law has since passed.
The house now feels almost too quiet. I’m still exhausted. My ability to focus is fragile, and I can feel the residue of hypervigilance lingering in my body.
It’s been over two months, and my nervous system still has a way to go.
The urgency is gone, but my body hasn’t quite caught up yet. —Karin