King Lear--A Story of Adult Children Caregivers

Now, maybe you’re thinking that Shakespeare didn’t write a play about family caregivers, and that I, duh, missed the point of possibly his greatest play. But I’ll debate you on that.

This afternoon I went to my local theater to see this magnificent literary work as a live feed from London. The movie theater audience watched the play as it was being performed on stage—live—in London. The lead role—King Lear—played by the great actor Ian McKellan.

During the curtain speech to the audience--to the London audience and the audiences watching the live feed around the world-- it was suggested that the play is the play and that we were likely to see politicians we know, family members, friends, public figures represented.

That’s the thing with Shakespeare isn’t it—what we mean when we say his work is universal…the issues and perspectives and personalities are universal.

So, as I watched this powerful story played out on stage and screen I kept thinking, “That’s exactly what happens to adult children as family caregivers.” And I think that if you have ever been in that caregiving role, or if you are a parent or grandparent being cared for by adult children, you’ll recognize these dynamics as well. Sometimes the actor’s lines felt like they were written just yesterday by someone’s sister or someone’s daughter-in-law.

The story of King Lear, you may remember from ages ago, is about the aging (and possibly dementing) King, and his three daughters Regan, Goneril and Cordelia. As the play opens he is asking them to declare how much they love him. (Like a really bad Thanksgiving dinner table scene).

They each profess to love their father to the moon and back, but youngest daughter Cordelia, calls out her sisters on their insincerity—and sort of says, “Dad, I love you and you know that, isn’t that enough?” But Lear gets pissed and divides his Kingdom between the older sisters, who—within minutes—are scheming to NOT have to take care of the old man.

Later, when there is an agreement that Dad will stay 100 days with each daughter for his care, the daughters can’t wait to hand him over to the other: “You take him now.” “No, you can take him sooner.” “He’s a mess when he’s here and it disrupts our whole household.” “Well, I don’t want him here.” And on and on.

And they call him old, and tell him he’s crazy, and they resent his illness and the messes he makes. They are ungrateful for sure, and from that comes one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

Now, in real life as a caregiver, no one gets his eyes poked out, and not many people get stabbed as they do in King Lear, but we know that sibling relationships do take a hard beating when care of a parent is involved.

So, thank you to Bill Shakespeare and to Ian McKellan for this powerful verbal and visual reminder that caregiving stress is as old as time.

When Stepfamilies Face Caregiving

This week I taught a caregiving workshop and had the opportunity to talk about another layer of caregiving challenges that families face. It’s one that folks bring up one-to-one after a workshop because there is still shame and discomfort. But the truth is that the Boomer Bump that brings us so much caregiving and huge changes in our medical system also produce more stepfamilies. There are simply more of us in the 50 to 65 group. So we have more marriages, divorces, remarriages, second families, and therefore more stepparents and step kids. 

What do you do when the patient is a stepparent or the caregiving involves stepchildren? It can be that the natural parent needs extra help with their spouse but the kids are stepchildren who feel disloyal or angry, or maybe the ill parent has kids who don’t want to share caregiving duties with a “new” husband or wife.

John and I faced that and it was painful. His adult children –angry about their parents divorce --would not participate in any caregiving. And even refused to visit John in the hospital. We had so many friends who did pitch in, and that caregiving team bonded so well, that we were not hurt logistically, but emotionally the hurt was huge.

That is the tricky part of step family caregiving: there is enough old and new pain to affect everyone: parent, stepparent, the exes and even the new spouses on both sides.

Every issue that stirs the pot in family caregiving: time, money, travel, decision making, fear and facing death gets an extra jab and extra level of pain in a step family. The standard advice about having a family meeting to make a caregiving team may not work if exes are refusing to work with a new partner, or still tugging at the kid’s loyalties.

While family therapy may be the best call for stepfamilies in non-crisis time, when cancer caregiving hits there is not time or energy for that luxury. That’s when good friends and the couple themselves have to make a conscious decision to make a new family of choice.