Who could possibly do this alone?

On packing up a beloved aunt's home, thoughts about "being a burden" and why family is the best insurance policy of all

Last week I had the pleasure of spending a week with my 78-year-old aunt, Paula, at her home in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

Aunt Paula with her unspeakably cool 60’s ‘do, holding my sister Kathreen, Chicago circa 1967

Aunt Paula has lived in the Chicago area for as long as I can remember. When I was young, she and my uncle Jim lived in a three-flat in the north neighborhood of Edgewater, later they moved to the ‘burbs.

But no matter where she lived, Aunt P has always been a family icon.

A working actress in the 70s, 80s, and into the 90s, she’s still a card-carrying member of both SAG-AFTRA and Equity, and was married for decades to a stage electrician at the Lyric Opera. Aunt Paula always lived in cool homes with seemingly-exotic city-person decor, glamorously artsy friends (or maybe they were just a little strange; it was hard for this small-town girl to tell the difference), and strikingly, no kids of her own—which for me, the youngest in a big family, made it feel like I’d been invited into an exclusive adults-only club whenever I’d get to spend time with her one-on-one.

I’m not that little girl anymore, and Aunt Paula is no longer a young actress in an Edgewater flat. She’s been widowed for two decades, living alone with a rotating cast of small dogs, and has been mostly very happy with her independence. But experiencing compounding health issues, and having a harder time getting around, she finally accepted my uncle’s invitation to live with him in Florida.

Once the decision was made, things moved quickly. The house needed to go on the market; a lifetime’s worth of things sorted and packed, sold, or donated—and hopefully quickly. Her healthcare would need to be transferred to another state. She and her dog, her car, and some of her stuff would need to be transported to Florida. Decades of her life would need to be organized, categorized, and dispersed.

Who could possibly do all this alone?

Two weeks ago, my brothers and sister and nieces and nephew and kids descended on her house and started the job. I stayed last week to help put some of the pieces together; my cousin Mollie tagged in on Easter Sunday and will be there all week; my brother and I, the closest geographically, will head back in a week to finish up, and Paula’s stepson will close up the loose ends and get on a plane with her mid-month.

That’s a lot of human power to move one old lady and a 12-pound dog across the country. But then again, who could possibly do it alone?

The younger generation enjoying a little downtime from packing

I recently read something striking: the “magic number” the average American believes they will need to retire comfortably has skyrocketed to $1.46M, while the average amount of money the average American actually has saved is less than $90,000. The distance between what most of us have, and what we believe we’ll need, speaks, I think, to so much confusion about what a “good life” in our later years is supposed to look like, and how we are ever supposed to achieve it.

It’s hard for me to judge whether the “magic number” is way too high, way too low, or just right, because it seems to depend on a huge number of variables: not just “How do I want to spend my retirement years?” but also “How long will I live?” and “How healthy will I be?” and “Will my decline come upon me slowly and predictably and at an expected age, or rapidly and more prematurely than hoped?”

Several times last week my aunt - a neat and tidy woman living in a modest townhome with barely any clutter - expressed regret for having “so much stuff” and that her family had to “come take care of it” for her. I understand her sentiments, in a way: Aunt P. probably always assumed she’d be be easily mobile for plenty enough time to scale back and downsize on her own terms. For such a formerly-independent person to be unable to do it all herself was beyond frustrating.

But I had no resentment as I bubble-wrapped decades-old china and glassware and placed it carefully in boxes. No, she hadn’t used it in years. Yes, at some point, she could have given it all away. But how could she have known the exact moment she was passing over a series of thresholds: the last dinner party thrown, the last day she’d feel up to the task of packing all her “extra” things and disposing of them herself?

More frustration, as I helped her set up the text alerts that would allow her to confirm house showings. “I used to be a secretary; this used to be the kind of thing I did all the time!” she said, voice brittle and tense, as she gamely tried to switch between her landline and cell phone but kept forgetting which notices came to which phone. Meanwhile I, thirty-two years her junior, struggled to remember how to set up a new contact on an iPhone, despite the fact that I’ve had one for at least twelve years.

Who could possibly do it alone?

So many of my friends are caring for elderly parents right now; often at the same time they’re caring for young children. I know it’s hard, hard work. And after just one week of being a live-in professional organizer and move consultant, dog-walker, pill-reminder, and barely-competent tech support for an ailing elder relative, you might think the experience would make me go home ever more convinced of the need to prepare and plan to never be in that position myself.

Instead it impressed upon me what an impossible task that sort of preparation is to expect of any human being of normal abilities and means, especially if they (like most of us) also lack the ability to predict the future.

It’s tempting to believe that if I save enough money, buy the right amount of long-term care insurance, downsize early, and do one round of “Swedish Death Cleaning” every quarter, I might believe I can inoculate myself against the indignity of having needs, and my family against the inconvenience and stress of meeting them.

I just don’t think it works that way. Moreover, I don’t think I want it to work that way.

My parents have both been gone for a long time: my mother died 24 years ago, my father, 12. When my mother died, my three older siblings and I numbly combed through her things, packed up her home and got it ready for sale. When my dad died, that task fell to my stepmother. In both cases, someone had to step in and handle the messy aftermath of a life cut short sooner than expected.

But don’t most lives, or at least the parts of our lives that we’re able to live with ease and independence, end sooner than really expected or hoped for?

It’s impossible to know how I’d feel now, if my parents were still alive, being messy and difficult in their real-ness and alive-ness and extended neediness. I can’t say how I’d react to those needs; and I am sure I would not always be cheerful and gracious about them, just like I don’t expect that my kids will be when they’re the ones in the position to be caring for me. Here’s the rub, though: I do hope—and yes, expect—that one day they will step into that position anyway.

Is it so wrong, so un-American, to feel that my family is the most critical insurance policy I can hold?

Yes, there are sophisticated financial instruments and insurance policies that can help us protect our assets, sometimes at high cost. Paid caregivers, assisted-living facilities and nursing homes can be important ways to fill gaps that family cannot. And I’m certainly not advocating for hoarding or spending with no thought for the future.

But not every kind of help can be bought, even if you have the price—and most of us won’t know the exact right timing to plan for either. Life, health, and the stock market are unpredictable. The thing I hope to be able to count on, more than my 401K, Social Security, or long-term care insurance, are the investments I’ve made in other people.

There’s a tendency in our culture that I find unsettling - we seem to believe that if we just plan adequately, we can that we can somehow sidestep the fact that at some point, we’ll be dependent, and—here’s the crucial part—that we can’t necessarily know when that will be.

I could live until I’m 67, or 85, or 99. I could die suddenly—or linger. I can try to plan for each scenario but in the end, it’s just a wild guess. And no matter how masterful my planning, at some point someone is going to have to take care of me, my needs, and yes - my stuff.

I’m neither a minimalist nor a maximalist. I’m a person who dislikes clutter but likes creature comforts, who edits my “collections” often but still loves some of the physical objects that I’ve chosen to surround myself with. I suppose I could treat my 60s or 70s like an “everything must go” fire sale, but then what if I live until 90 and still want to host a tea party every now and then?

As I said in the podcast episode that published today, “I just hope that one day, when it's my kids packing up my tea sets, that they recognize the joy some of my belongings bring me now, and why I might want them around me as long as possible.”

I hope they will be able to handle helping me navigate the dispersal of my things, the delegation of what I plan to refer to often as my “affairs”, and the delicacy of my feelings with all the grace and energy their comparatively-youthful bodies allow, rather than wallow in resentment that I didn’t manage to forecast the future, hire the right kind of help, or purchase the right kind of insurance so they wouldn’t have to.

I like to believe that’s the kind of family culture I’m creating, anyway. We’re a messy, loud, disorganized group, my siblings and I and our numerous children—but in a pinch, we know how to show up, because we believe it’s important.

And I’m counting on that belief to get passed down to the next generation, too.

I fully realize that it may be seen as naive, irresponsible, or even blasphemous to our modern way of thinking to suggest that the most sustainable and human solution for getting old with dignity may actually lie outside of pouring more money into the capitalist system.

Of course, at some point paid help—whether it’s professional organizers and movers, in-home caregivers, or nursing care—will very likely be needed for most of us.

But I believe there’s something we need even more: the care and help of the human beings we are in relationship with.

And unlike purchased help, family help isn’t a one-way transaction; the emotional benefits go both ways. As I shared in my podcast episode, having a house full of Aunt Paula’s stuff to deal with on a definite deadline allowed us all a great opportunity to get together in a space that has meant a lot to us over the years, with a person who has meant a lot to us over the years. Without being needed in such a specific way, I’m not sure we would all have made the point to come together at the same time. Needing others gives them an opportunity to step in and come together. It’s valuable to need.

From my podcast episode:

In this life, we're all going to have times when we are the ones equipped to give, and times when we are more equipped to receive. And sometimes, we are able to do both at the same time. Last week, hanging out with my aunt and dealing with some stuff that was, yes, a little overwhelming and annoying at times, I gave a lot, but I got a lot too—and it really helped to confirm and validate for me that this is why we're here. This is what family is all about. And this is why humans need each other.

None of us can - or should - do it alone.

P.S. I have been enjoying the Speaking With Joy podcast with Joy Clarkson lately, and really loved this episode about getting comfortable with the idea of being a “burden”. Very in line with my overall thoughts about the fallacy of “self-sufficiency,” what we “owe” one another and what we are “owed”.

P.P.S. I am fascinated by the topic of retirement planning in general. It’s an area where we get a constant stream of rather anxiety-inducing financial advice that it would seem almost nobody is following anyway, and there’s also such a huge variety of ways people choose to live meaningfully in their older years. Definitely something I plan to revisit often!