This week, I got the news that my mother has dementia. It came less than two months after my father received the same diagnosis.
I got the phone call about my mother on the same day as my son’s birthday. It turned into a day of jumbled emotions, from joy to sorrow, celebration to mourning, and reflections on getting old to being young and growing up.
I don’t like writing about the private in public because I am a private person. However, I’m partly writing this for selfish reasons: as a form of therapy. Also, though, I think it’s important to have a more open discussion about getting old and preparing for death. It’s something I wish my family did.
A short biography of my parents
My parents are a typical post-World War Two European migrant story. My father arrived in 1961 from Austria, first in Melbourne, then in Adelaide. Not long after, my mother arrived in Adelaide from Austria too.
They met at an Austrian restaurant/bar in Adelaide, got married, and had their first child, my brother, in 1965.
They settled down in the south of Adelaide, in one of the city’s poorer suburbs. My father became a painter and my mother a legal secretary.
I wasn’t meant to come into this world but did anyway, in 1976. By then, my family had moved to a beachside suburb in Adelaide’s west, which was then a middle-class suburb but now is trendy.
Like a lot of migrants, they worked hard and saved hard and managed to secure a relatively comfortable retirement.
In retirement, they didn’t really feel the void left by work, retreating to live a simple life.
How dementia came slowly, and suddenly
My dad’s health has been gradually deteriorating for a decade. He’s had diabetes for a long time and lost his hearing a few years ago. Mentally, there’s been a gradual slide.
His dementia diagnosis therefore didn’t come as a surprise.
What was surprising was he seemed fine with the diagnosis. My mother was more worried, though became more comfortable as my dad ploughed on and seemed his usual self.
I’d noticed a deterioration in my mother’s health, especially her memory and problem-solving skills, over the past 12 months. She’d gone from alert and energetic, to more vague and tired.
Health care consultants who’d been visiting my parents over several months also raised their concerns about my mother.
So, the diagnosis of her dementia didn’t surprise either. Though it’s been harder to take, with two parents having dementia rather than just one, and seeing my mother deteriorate after having been the rock of the family.
Getting prepared for what’s ahead
Dementia isn’t a death sentence and can often be a slow process over many years. Both my parents have early-stage dementia so this could be the case for them too.
I have enough concerns for both of them that things seem more urgent than that. These concerns were heightened by a subsequent call with one of the healthcare consultants who said she believed my dad had progressed from early to moderate dementia since he was first diagnosed.
My dad lost his drivers license upon the initial diagnosis and my mum will soon lose hers. They can stay in their house for now with the help of government services including meals, cleaning, and diabetes treatment. That may change if things get worse.
I have several regrets after receiving this week’s news.
First, there is a lot of guilt about not being able to take care of my parents. My brother and I live interstate and there is no other family that can handle their daily needs. I now feel an immense responsibility to take care of them, like they did for me when raising me.
Second, I wish ageing and preparing for death weren’t taboo subjects in my family. Fear has led to silence on these topics. I feel like a more open discussion could have led to more love and appreciation of moments along the way.
Third, the lack of discussion has resulted in our family not being fully prepared for what’s ahead. On my last trip to see my parents, after months of haggling, I was finally able to get copies of bills that need paying, their wills, passwords for anything online, and access to their bank accounts. I didn’t then organize to become an enduring power of attorney for them, and that has become a more urgent need now.
Through my experiences thus far, my advice on how to handle ageing within a family would be this:
- Talk about ageing and death and all that they entail early.
- Do it with love.
- Ideally, the parents should lead the discussion.
- Prepare everything well in advance – wills, powers of attorney, copies of important documents, living arrangements.
- Make every moment count.
James Gruber
In this week's edition...
Harry Chemay charts how Australia's 33-year old superannuation system has turned into today's 4.3 trillion behemoth, though it now faces an existential crisis: either preference the retirement phase over asset gathering, or risk regulatory purgatory. He analyses why many funds aren't rising to the challenge, and what they need to do about it.
The recent actions of the US government under Donald Trump – acquiring equity stakes in major corporations – signal a potential shift toward a hybrid model of capitalism. Roger Montgomery asks whether Australia should follow suit and own stakes in the businesses extracting our vast resource wealth, to ensure a better quality of life for all Australians.
Donald Trump's threats to the independence of the US Federal Reserve seems to have put a rocket up the price of gold. Can it continue? And what could stop its ascent? David Tait offers his thoughts.
Even in countries like Australia that have historically avoided nuclear power, debate over its role in the energy mix has reignited. Capital Group's Jayme Colosimo and team outline four things for investors to keep in mind as they navigate opportunities in the sector.
Lowering the company tax rate was one of the discussion points at Jim Chalmers' economic roundtable. Peter Swan and Dimitri Burshtein explain why perceptions of our high corporate tax are a mirage, while Jon Kalkman offers an altnerative view, suggesting our current company tax arrangements are fair and equitable.
We live in a noisy world with so much information at our disposal. The best investors know how to filter that information and use their judgment and common sense to produce outsized returns. Leigh Gant details how they do it - and how you can too.
Lastly, in this week's whitepaper, Kevin Hebner of TD Epoch - an affiliate of GSFM - thinks we are in the early innings of an economic rebalancing that cannot succeed without a dramatically lower US dollar.
Curated by James Gruber and Leisa Bell
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