From left: Pauline
Hammerstein, Fannie
Koss and Sally Fields.
Page 1 photographs, left:
Ruth Berkley and her
mother Fannie Koss.
Right: Ida Mittler and
daughter Sarah
Eisenberg. Below: a scene
at Borman Hall.
The 'sandwich generation
faces critical, expensive
choices for the well-being
of their parents
BY SUSAN WELCH
Special to The Jewish News
I
FOR THE AGED
or adult children. Despite the numer-
For seven years before his death
ous (and genuine) reports of destitute
at the age of 82, Jack Yamron lived
elderly, "It's a myth that the family is
with his son Ralph, his daughter-in-
not to be found," says Elizabeth Sulli-
law Marlene, and their three children.
van, care management supervisor of
Caring for their elderly relative was a
the Area Agency on Aging in South-
responsibility the Yamron family
field. More often than not, when there
undertook readily and enjoyed.
isn't a family member there, it's be-
The first five or six years were
cause of life-long family discord and
fantastic," says Marlene Yamron,
not something that happened at age
"especially for the children." He was
60, or whenever the functional disabil-
great," agrees 16-year-old daughter
Amy, remembering her grandfather's
ity begins."
But even for the most devoted and
affection and sense of humor.
well-intentioned family, caring for the
Looking after him in his senior
elderly can be fraught with difficul-
years was something Marlene took for
ties. We do not all "go gently into that
granted. "He looked after us when we
were little, so it was something that I
good night." For the Yamrons, both of
whom work full time, the last year of
had to do, and wanted to do," she says,
Jack's life became "a nightmare" as
simply expressing the age-old tradi-
his physical and mental health began
tion of offering to the family elders
to deteriorate. Jack began to wander
love, honor, respect and care.
off; he forgot to turn off the stove; he
The tradition is sometimes more
forgot to eat, or forgetting that he had
honored in the breach than the obser-
.eaten, ate lunch two or three times; he
vance these days, but it still exists.
forgot to go to the bathroom; he was
Studies shoW that the majority of
unable to distinguish between a bottle
care-givers to the dependent elderly
of alchohol and a bottle of pop; he
are family members, usually spouses
44 Friday, June 27, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
needed, in fact, constant attention 24
hours a day.
Looking after an aged parent can
be "totally consuming," agrees Miriam
Sandweiss, director of the Senior
Adult Department at the Jewish
Community Center in Oak Park, who
is herself involved in the care of two
elderly and invalid relatives. It takes
up every aspect of your day. It im-
pinges on everything you do. It puts
constraints, not only on your activi-
ties, but on how you see yourself in
your own life."
Like the Yamrons, Mrs.
Sandweiss belongs to what is being
called "the sandwich generation,"
caught, she explains "between the
needs of our children (often adolescent
or college-aged) on the one hand and
our parents on the othe•." and some-
times almost overwhelmed by the
competing physical, emotional and fi-
nancial demands.
Some of the problems have always
existed. Shakespeare was not the first
to observe (erroneously, according to
many experts) that "crabbed age and
youth cannot live together."
But the complexities of the con-
temporary world have given the diffi-
culties new dimensions. Many adult
children now live thousands of miles
away from their parents. Women, tra-
ditionally the care-givers, are often
now occupied in full-time jobs outside
the home. Teenagers, schooled in ad-
vanced technologies, are often far
more able than their elders to com-
prehend the realities of a com-
puterized world, and more than tradi-
tionally unwilling to venerate the
philosophical wisdom of age. A society
seemingly obsessed by keeping fit and
looking young finds aging flesh unap-
pealing, even frightening in its inti-
mations of mortality.
`Confronting the fact of our par-
ents' aging and imminent death is dif-
ficult, not only because it means losing
them, but because it brings home the
fact of our own," says Charles Wolfe,
executive vice president of the Jewish
Home for the Aged. Difficult or not, it