Gradually, though, the visits and texts slowed. A series of disagreements distanced Randi from her mother and sisters. Randi’s mother told me that one of their first arguments started when Keith was still in the hospital. She worried that taking care of him would overwhelm Randi and felt that he should instead be looked after by medical professionals while the family helped. But Randi refused. During her father’s brief stay in the rehab facility, she said staff members failed to treat his fluid retention, which ultimately resulted in another trip to the hospital. When Randi’s mother learned that Keith was in a relationship, she no longer felt it was her place to be by his side.
Keith’s girlfriend, Jackie Davila, a former nursing-home administrator, dropped in regularly to help him shower and accompany him to doctors’ appointments. She and Randi moved in sync when helping Keith to and from the car. But Jackie’s support could feel fragile at times. She juggled a full-time job managing cancer patients and also checked in on her own ailing family members. On nights when she left after an argument with Keith, Randi could only hope she would return before too much time passed.
Randi also had a boyfriend, DeMonta Cummings, who was 28 and worked as a truck driver. On his days off, he came over with his 8-year-old son, an expressive, inquisitive third grader, to watch football with Keith or take the girls shopping. The girls lit up when they were around. When Big DeMonta was on the road, Little DeMonta sometimes stayed with Randi for a week or more.
In a pioneering study of adult-children caregivers, the social worker Elaine Brody found that in every family in which an aging parent required care, there was usually one “burden bearer” — a single member who bore the brunt of the responsibilities, even when there were, in theory, others who could help. “This phenomenon appears with striking regularity and frequency,” Brody co-wrote in the journal, Family Process, in 1966.
The burden bearer could be patient and self-sacrificing but also bitter. About one in three caregivers reported their relationships with siblings deteriorated. Those who lived with their parents experienced more stress — “problems may be more exacerbated if the home is small or ill equipped for care, resulting in crowding or loss of privacy.” Daughters, Brody found, were more likely to report symptoms of depression, restlessness and feelings of isolation and missing out. In a later study of sandwiched caregivers with siblings, published in 2003, two-thirds reported an “inequitable” spread of labor and “feeling considerable distress” as a result. One woman told researchers that her sisters helped somewhat — one flew in for a week out of the year, and the other helped with finances — “but there are still times when it just pisses me off royally.” Women remain the majority of family caregivers today, although among millennials, the share of men is closer to half.
