sandwich

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My Daughter just got out of the hospital with a MS flare-up. My dad has had two strokes, has a heart condition, takes a blood thinner, I think it is coumadin, and so could bleed to death if he falls. And he falls. I am trying to manage my own ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, and keep up on self care and work. My oldest is living at home finishing his college degree one class at a time. My youngest is trying to finish 8th grade and enter HS.
The call this the "Sandwich generation". Still caring for the young ones and suddenly (or not so suddenly) caring for the old ones.
It is hard. Not any one thing. But they keep coming.

I don't have any kids but had to help take care of my parents and of my boyfriend when he was dying of cancer. It's absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done.

41, always have been single

Parents dead in 2015 and 2020, age 66 and 71

Zero children

Live alone

SF,
I hear you. Things are tough when you have aging parents. Things are tough when you have none. Things are tough looking after kids. Things are tough when you have none.
My mom died slowly over 5 years of pancreatic cancer.

I lived close enough to a full time job that I could also take care of a spouse dying of ALS.
I'd come home during lunch time for two hours and then go back to work.

Good luck with keeping up with all that.

I've never heard of sandwich generation before. Your life sounds very full. Do you ever get a bit of time for yourself

we are not the first generations to go through this, and often with less support (think of when most of the men in the country were off somewhere fighting a war). Yes, life is incredibly tough and some of us have trials and troubles that are painfully indescribably awful. Chronic illness, health, money problems, so much more are what is referred to as "the human condition" We all have struggles. Some of us have incredibly heavy burdens to bear.
Hope you can find the support you need. It is OK to reach out for help, and there are many helps available in all but the least developed countries today. If you find you can't do it alone, it is OK to seek the help of others.

Yep, that’s hard. At least your youngest is plenty old enough to make their own sandwich and help out with household chores etc vs having Very young ones to tend to while dealing with the elderly.

I sometimes used to think it was a shame I’d likely never have kids because I like kids and I’m good with them and kids like me. But I’ve long since gotten over that and accept that I can be a very good god father and uncle to a bunch of kids and just pop in and out of their lives, spoil them with gifts, spend some time with them, help out the older ones as needed etc and then get back to my own life w/o the full time commitment of dealing with a kid or two or more. Definitely would have made being there for my father in his final
days significantly more challenging. No thanks.

If I had kids 13-20 something I’d be delegating things to them to do to split the workload while I dealt with the parent(s). Previous generations’ kids had a Lot more work to do to contribute to the family farm/household etc, so I wouldn’t feel bad one bit about upping expectations of cooperation from grown kids. That’s me, though, and how I would manage getting through it.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.