Hello, you don’t know me, but…

“When the Time Comes” follows nearly a dozen families facing decisions about their elderly parents, and tells their stories in detail. My plan involved talking to both the adult children and their elders as they tried to figure out: Should Mom move in here with us?  Can she stay at home with aides?  Would Dad do well in assisted living?  Oh God, do we have to find a nursing home?  Is it time to call hospice?

I wanted to hear how families grappled with their options, how they handled the financial burdens and the intense emotions.  I wanted to see what happened after they made the decision or the move.  How did things turn out?

I located families through all the strategies long-form journalists use: Some people came recommended by friends.  Senior facilities and programs helped me find others. One daughter answered a notice I’d placed in a small community newspaper in upstate New York.

My criteria: People needed to be within a four- or five-hour drive of my home in New Jersey, so that I could make multiple visits and conduct multiple interviews.  With elderly people, conditions can change unpredictably; I wanted to be on the scene quickly if something was going on.

And because this was a work of journalism, I barred fake names or composites.  Readers need to know that these are real people; the families had to trust me to use their real names.  Plenty of people said no to this condition.  But the families in the book, with the exception of one daughter identified by her first name and last initial, all agreed.  In fact, you can see their family photos and videos on www.paulaspan.com.

I think a lot about why they agreed.  If you were going through this wrenching process, watching your father’s health decline or worrying about your mother’s fading mental acuity, wondering how on earth you were going to pay for care, losing sleep– if you were dealing with all that, why would you want a stranger with a notebook around?  Wouldn’t a reporter be the very last person you’d want to see?

I think two factors led these families to agree to work with me.  First, we live in a culture where people don’t feel understood or paid attention to.  Therapists and social workers know this: Sometimes listening, without judgment, can in itself help people feel better.  Listening is something reporters know how to do.

More importantly, adult children making eldercare choices understand how little preparation they had for the role.  They know what it’s like to suddenly have to amass information about things that a few weeks earlier had been only words or acronyms: Medicaid, assisted living, ADL’s.  They reasoned that their experiences might prove useful to other families, might prevent others from having quite so hard a time.

So people said yes to the stranger with the notebook, and I am so grateful.

I call my book a support group in print.

        --Paula Span