Male Caregivers
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weekend. Louis agreed to pick up Helen
from the day program she now attends
twice a week. The siblings decided that
if they all gave up small indulgences
such as potato chips, they could each
contribute $20 a week to hire a family
friend to cover in-between times (at a
steeply discounted hourly rate). Mama
Helen smiled broadly as she listened to
her children’s suggestions.
Eighteen months later Louis had
shed his guilt and acquired new skills
as an advocate for the elderly, which
earned him respect from his family—
and made him a better administrator
at work. He now sees their shared
caregiving role as a gift.
“One mother can raise seven chil-
dren,” Louis says, “but it takes seven
of us to take care of Mom.”
curtailing his social life and travel. “It
was my life for those years—about six
years—a structured routine,” he says.
Two years after his mother died, one son still
feels an undertow of loss about those last,
intimate years of caregiving. “I miss it, even
the hard stuff,” he says. “It’s all valuable.”
MEN ARE OFTEN SURPRISED BY
the depths of intimacy the caregiver’s
role awakens in them. In 2001 veteran
actor Victor Garber had just moved
to Los Angeles to begin the TV series
Alias when his mother developed early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Hope
Garber, then in her mid-70s, was in
denial about her illness, yet could not
be left alone in her West Los Angeles
apartment. Victor—who is single and
whose brother and sister live in Canada—arranged for home health aides
through a public agency but found
them “shockingly inadequate.” He
had to coerce his mother into moving
into an assisted living facility.
“From that point on,” he says, “my
mother became my child.”
Victor, now 61, saw his role as the
care manager. He found a take-charge
woman willing to spend days with his
mother, keeping her engaged with
shopping excursions and other activi-
ties. He was on the set 12 to 15 hours a
day playing a heartlessly cruel CIA
agent, but every morning Victor would
wake up feeling guilty and empathetic,
making plans to call his mother, meet
her for lunch, or take her to a film. He
built his schedule around his mother,
line [800-272-3900] when I didn’t
know what to do.” (The association
also has a website: alz.org.) Victor and
his mother looked forward to the or-
ganization’s annual fundraiser in Los
Angeles, the Memory Walk. It drew
them out of isolation and made them
feel part of a community.
Gail Sheehy was AARP’s Caregiving
Ambassador in 2009. Her latest book,
Passages in Caregiving, comes out in May.
