Too many older people spend their final days lonely and alone. This is a story about someone who didn’t.
It was the kindness of an acquaintance that made the difference.
None of us likes to think about our eventual endings.
Nor do we enjoy contemplating the same of the people we love.
Still, despite all of our wishes and efforts to stop it, time only marches forward. All of us get old eventually.
According to research, increasing numbers of older folks have no children or spouses to care for them. They spend their final weeks and days with no hands to hold.
Unless, that is, someone steps in to fill that lonely void.
This is a story about such a person.
Today’s story starts 2016.
That’s when someone named Dodi passed away, with no children to settle her affairs.
It was true that she and her husband, Ed, were still technically married, but they hadn’t been together for at least 25 years. In fact, for almost as long as they’d been estranged, he’d had another partner.
Despite this, the two had remained legally married, and Dodi remained in the Manhattan co-op apartment that she and Ed co-owned.
This legal arrangement was going to complicate things for Alex, who would serve as the will’s executor. She and Dodi had known one another for years. Alex knew Ed, too. He’d been her father’s best friend. When Alex’s father had died unexpectedly in 1994, just months before her wedding, Ed had walked her down the aisle.
Still, it was Dodi that Alex regarded as a close friend. Ed? He had become more of an acquaintance.
When it came to the co-op apartment, Alex was forced to make a difficult decision.
The couple had purchased the apartment during the 1970s. Dodi owned half, and Ed the other half. In 2016, it was worth many times more than what they’d paid.
According to a strict legal interpretation, Dodi’s will directed that her half should become part of her estate and shared among the beneficiaries, one of whom was Alex.
On the other hand…
“The spirit of the will was that they’d bought it together,” says Alex. “They’d always assumed that the surviving spouse would get the whole thing. What surprised me is that I never wavered for one second. I knew this was what she would have wanted. It did cost me, but I didn’t waver.”
A few years later, Ed reconnected with Alex to let her know he planned to marry Lauren, the woman he’d been dating for years. He was 83. She was was not far behind.
“I was so excited for them,” Alex says. “It was just amazing.”
Soon after, Alex got another call.
Lauren had died.
The wedding would never happen.
The next call came a few months later, this time from Ed’s nephew who lived in Florida.
“Ed collapsed. He’s in the hospital, in midtown. If it’s near where you go, maybe you could drop by,” he suggested.
“I told him that, of course, I would visit. I had no idea what I was embracing at the time,” she says.
She found Ed sullen, depressed, and with no will to live. According to the doctors, there was no diagnosis, because there was nothing officially wrong. Ed, it seemed, was dying from grief.
After being discharged, Ed returned home, only to collapse again. This time, when she got the call, it was clear to Alex that Ed needed more care than his nephew or niece, both of whom lived several states away, could provide.
“That was when I realized that I was in this for whatever he needs,” she says. “I knew I had to be his woman on the ground.”
Alex broached a topic usually reserved for older parents and their adult children.
“Ed,” she said gently. “You can’t live alone. You’re going to need professional care.” He wasn’t happy with the idea, but he also didn’t fight it.
As a nonprofit professional, Alex knew how to pull the levers, signing him up for rehab, then assisted living, and then nursing care, all in the span of six months.
It was anything but convenient.
Alex worked full time in Manhattan, which was 90 minutes from her home in New Jersey. With two teenagers, her life was already full. Despite this, several evenings a week, after work, she drove another 30 or more minutes to the nursing home where Ed lived.
“I never resented it,” she says. “I never questioned it—not for a second.”
All the while, Alex ensured his bills remained paid, his apartment cared for, and his other needs attended to. “It wasn’t just handling his affairs. I was good at that part,” she says. “It was being emotionally available to him. I was just there for him.”
Ed died two days before the nursing home would have locked down with Covid.
Like Dodi, he’d also named Alex the executor of his will. As she sorted through his affairs, she found a note he’d written to his attorney. “I don't want Alex to worry for her family’s future,” he’d written. “She has two kids, otherwise known as The Great Sucking Vacuum of Expenses.”
He’d bequeathed her 20 percent of his estate. It was enough to pay off her debts as well as put her children through college.
“His will changed our lives,” she says.
It wasn’t only the inheritance that changed her life, however. Alex had just spent months caring for someone that, initially, she hadn’t known very well. The experience proved to her that she was capable of more than she ever knew.
“Other people probably do this sort of thing all the time,” she says, “But I didn’t realize I had that much generosity. I didn’t realize I was willing to do so much for someone for no reason other than they love you and they need you.”