Fighting For Pop-Pop

I never thought it would come to this. Two clashing life-styles at total odds. Offspring at cross-purposes. Brothers unable to agree. And a dear man caught on the brink of understanding it all, but unable to grasp the depth of the situation. I think of the choices my husband and I have made over the past 24 years. Decisions designed to have little stress. Simple possessions that we can easily manage, splurging on adventures instead of property; memories born of time spent together not in memorabilia. This is what my parents taught me. This is what Pop-Pop taught my husband. And this is what we are teaching our children. The lessons well learned and appreciated by us have been lost on others. Not everyone in the "sandwich generation" is willing to be sandwiched, opting instead to let an impersonal institution care for the man who served during WWII, has been a great husband, father, grandfather, uncle, son, neighbor, employee and employer. A little balance issue, a little dementia, a few misplaced words are hardly reasons to institutionalize a man. A nursing home is still an institution, no matter what you call it or how you decorate the hallways or the gardens. A man can get lost there, without even leaving his room.