My mother had ten years of increasingly poor health before her death, including several strokes, etc., and it really was true for us that so much depended on our financial means, which fortunately weren't too bad, but also so much depended on our family remaining able to help out. There were six 'children' in our family. One is disabled, but it definitely took all five of the rest of us to help out at various times and in various ways over those ten years. I don't know how smaller, more spread-out (or dysfunctional) families cope.

And the caregiving definitely took its toll on us (two sisters divorced during this time, another had mental illness problems, so a lot of the work fell on my brother and me), but everyone did what they could or we wouldn't have gotten by.

Carolyn