My Parent's Keeper by Jody Gastfriend

Author:Jody Gastfriend
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Long-Distance Working Caregiver

Under the best of circumstances, the life of a salesperson has its ups and downs. At forty-eight, Phil had twenty years of sales experience. His job selling analytics to financial services companies was an exciting but high-pressure position. He’d always been a top performer, but year-end quotas combined with longer than anticipated sales cycles weighed him down. A new thirty-something boss routinely sent texts and emails late at night and on weekends, expecting his team to always be on. Phil did his best to respond quickly and meet his goals. He was counting on those fat commissions to make some much-needed repairs to his home. What he wasn’t counting on was an eldercare crisis.

Phil’s parents, both in their eighties, had managed to live pretty independently despite a few setbacks now and then. Their home was in a small town called Shiner, Texas. It didn’t help that Phil lived almost fifteen hundred miles away in Pittsburgh. Regular phone calls and the occasional visit to Shiner was all he could fit into his busy schedule. But as his father’s Parkinson’s disease worsened, the minor setbacks morphed into major problems. Phil’s mother, all five feet of her, could not handle the heavy lifting required to get her husband out of bed in the morning. But that didn’t stop her from trying. Like many spousal caregivers, Phil’s mother was at risk for injuring herself. One day when she was caring for Phil’s dad, she did just that and ruptured a disc. There was no longer any debate: Mom’s lifting days were over. Now it was up to Phil to figure out what to do next. And he felt pretty alone with all the responsibility. Recently divorced, Phil had a brother who lived abroad and checked in through email, but that was it.

Suddenly, Phil found himself in a club with a growing membership—family caregivers in the workforce. Unlike the majority of employed caregivers, who are women, Phil was a man in a male-dominated field. He had no intention of sharing his family saga with his text-happy always-on boss. Meanwhile, Phil was taking time off to shuttle back and forth to Texas to figure out how best to help his parents. Those missed days started to add up and draw unwanted attention. On average, working caregivers miss six and a half days of work a year.4 Like Phil, they are stressed out, distracted, or simply not able to focus on their jobs. In addition to the missed days, Phil’s work started to suffer. His sales numbers dropped and his hope for commissions evaporated. Emails sat unanswered in his inbox. Phil knew he was barely treading water but dared not speak up. “I didn’t leave my job, but in some sense I did. I was stalled out and exhausted. I lived with a constant fear of failure. Failing at my job, failing to meet my expenses, and worst of all, failing to take care of my parents.”

Little Shiner, Texas, may be home to a one-hundred-year-old brewery, but it’s not exactly a haven for eldercare.

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