Dear Prudence,
I’m in my late 20s. I’ve been dating the love of my life for a little over a year—we were best friends for almost a decade before we decided to date. We’ve been long distance the entire time, but both have been looking for jobs (unsuccessfully so far) that would allow us to live together. Then, within the last two months, both of our moms were diagnosed with different catastrophic illnesses that require a lot of care. My dad has his own health issues, so I moved back in with my parents to care for Mom and run the household. My boyfriend is the only one in his family willing and able to care full time for his mom. He has been with her for every appointment and is contemplating moving back to his hometown to do the same thing I’ve done. I believe these are morally sound decisions and that patients do better when they have family members as caregivers. But these moves take us even further apart. He and I haven’t even had the chance to make a home together, and then these situations befell us. What do we do now? How do we help each other cope while long distance, and maintain our relationship? It is so hard living alone in different cities but each needing our best friend.

—Half a Person

Dear Half,
You two are caring and dedicated offspring that any parent would be lucky to have. Sometimes a catastrophic illness comes with the news that the end is nigh. Sometimes the diagnosis is the beginning of a long, arduous decline. You don’t say that each of you is taking time off so that you can see your mothers to a quickly anticipated end. So it sounds as if you could potentially face years of caregiving. This is grueling work. You may feel this is the moral and loving thing to do, but if a year or two from now you are both burned out, isolated, and no closer to starting your lives together, then it will have been the wrong choice for you two and for your mothers. Letters such as yours are why parents need to have painful but blunt discussions with their grown children before a crisis arrives about how they have prepared for the worst. I can be accused of having a cold heart, but I am wary of the younger generation having to put their lives on hold for an indeterminate period to take care of the older one. If you are each acting as full-time caretakers, both of you will be seriously disrupting prime career-building years. Instead of spending your time establishing a home together, you two will be spending endless hours in waiting rooms and doctors’ offices. There are parents (and I am one) for whom the last thing they would want is to turn their child into their caretaker. So I think you two need to consider all the financial and support resources available to your mothers that would relieve you of being their full-time attendants. Maybe your parents can afford professional help, or maybe there are social service agencies they can turn to. Maybe it is time to sell the family homes and use that money for end-of-life care. Not being the ones to serve your mothers’ every needs doesn’t mean you’d be abandoning them. Coming up with a different plan, without sacrificing your own lives, would not only make sure your mothers are looked after, but also fulfill what must be their certain wish for their children to be happy. 

—Prudie