Letter From Langdon: The Tough Business of Growing Old

[nosmokes]

original-dailyyonder

Letter From Langdon: The Tough Business of Growing Old

12/10/2007


Rural areas have a higher percentage of elderly residents. Their quality of life depends on what local governments can scrounge and what local volunteers can give.

By Richard Oswald

One of the toughest businesses around Langdon is the business of growing old. Without employment opportunities, young adults more often than not leave behind rural areas for life and opportunity in the big city. While they may not completely leave their small town upbringing behind them, more often than not they do leave behind aging parents.

My family recently experienced the passing of our oldest living family member, my mother Merry. Mother outlived her life-mate and most lifelong friends. She was lucky that her children and grandchildren lived close enough to help her with trips to the doctor and other problems that sometimes arose. Not everyone in Mother’s generation is as fortunate as Merry was.

It’s difficult to make decisions for a parent. My sister and I were favored in that our mother was able to make most of her own. Both she and Dad saw to it that they had advance directives and a power of attorney. That helped our family to recognize what was expected of us. It also made watching life take its course a bit less unsure for our family, as Mother and Dad grew older.

Mother and our family learned a few weeks ago that the cost of a room in a nursing home, where the patient requires a high level of care, is now at about $160 per day. Patients who are considered incurable do not qualify for Medicare the same as those who are recovering from illness, which leaves them and their families to bear the full cost of care. But we also learned that Medicare will pay for hospice care, which reduces the cost of daily care by a few percentage points.

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