When my cellphone rings as I’m wrangling my boisterous 8- and 11-year-olds into bed in Spain, I answer immediately. I know I’m adding another hour to the bedtime routine.
It’s my mother in the UK, calling for the third time that day. I don’t know whether it’s an actual emergency or the kind where she can’t remember how the TV channels work.
When I moved away from home at 24, my mother was in my hometown raising my teenage brother. It never occurred to me that if I ever had children, my mother would get old enough to need taking care of at the same time.
I never thought it would be me
Back then, like most 24-year-olds, I couldn’t have told you what I’d be doing in a year’s time, let alone decades.
As it turned out, I would live in various countries, ticking them off a constantly evolving wish list, finally settling in Spain in 2012 and having children of my own three years later. Even then, the idea that my mother might not be independent forever never crossed my mind.
Not even in the last few years, as a trickle of my expat friends started moving back home to look after aging parents, did I think care responsibilities would fall to me. After all, I have two siblings in England who live closer, and I can’t move my children as I co-parent with their father, who lives in Spain.
Now that my mother is 80 and has a variety of significant health conditions, the buck often stops with me. My sister, who lives in the same town, has her own health issues, and my brother and mother don’t have the kind of relationship where he can help her in any practical sense.
My remote caring duties are 24/7
Some days I feel like a 24/7 remote-carer-stroke-personal-assistant. Our conversations increasingly sound as if I am the worst customer service worker ever, and my working day is constantly interrupted as I can no longer have my phone on silent in case it’s my mother or a caretaker.
I accompany her to doctor’s appointments virtually via WhatsApp, coordinate with home caretakers, and book taxis using a subscription service that lets me call local phone numbers.
Last June, I flew home for the weekend to accompany my mother to a concert my sister had bought tickets for and planned to take her to, but she was undergoing treatment and couldn’t.
I field multiple calls a day from my mother when she can’t remember how to use the microwave or has forgotten her bank PIN. Sometimes, it means missing half my kids’ football games or losing the chance to help them with homework.
Once, while my date drove me home at 11 p.m., I had to explain transactions on my mother’s bank statement over the phone. At least I managed to sound patient in front of him — it was the third time I’d explained the same thing that weekend.
On a practical level, there are things I wish I had realized sooner. My sister and I had at least organized a Power of Attorney, but it’s not as simple to use it from abroad as I expected.
I had to physically return to the UK in March to access the bank accounts and set up online banking.
The thing that’s hardest for me as Gen X(pat) sandwich
My mother is fairly unaware of all the logistics involved, though she is grateful for the help. Sometimes, when we’re both having a good day, we can just enjoy a nice conversation without me feeling guilty or irritated.
One of the hardest things about being part of the sandwich generation — a situation that could go on for years — is knowing my kids are learning how to care for me one day by watching how I care for my mother. Every impatient tone in my voice is teaching them something, and my youngest once said after overhearing me on the phone, “Don’t be mean to Nanna.”
I hope I learn how to manage it better because, in truth, it’s only going to get harder.
