Alexis Baden-Meyer’s mornings are complicated. She wakes up around 6 a.m., ushering herself out of bed just as the Washington D.C. sun climbs over the horizon. Her mother sleeps in the adjoining bedroom, to which the 46-year-old daughter makes a beeline. She bathes and dresses her mother, who’s 76 with Alzheimer’s. Around the house, slowly, others stir. By mid-morning, her husband is cooking breakfast for their young son, and if the timing’s right, he makes breakfast for Baden-Meyer’s mom as well. It’s one less thing for his wife to worry about.
In addition to her full-time nonprofit job, Baden-Meyer is her mother’s full-time caregiver.
“With Alzheimer’s at this stage, there are still moments when her personality shines through,” Baden-Meyer says of her mother, who was diagnosed in 2015. “It’s joy and pain every day.”
Before the pandemic, her mother would attend a daytime care facility on weekdays, giving Baden-Meyer the ability to clock in for a full day’s work. But now that facility is closed. One of their two paid care workers had to stop coming.
You Shouldn’t Have to Take Care of Your Aging Parents on Your Own
"For most older Americans, care will come from unpaid family members or friends, who contributed around $600 billion worth of free labor to the...
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