How Do We Help Our Aging Parents? With a Home Business.

Early in October, we were in Virginia for my step-son's wedding. There were yellowing leaves on the birches, yellow day lillies clumping beneath, and a hint of the changing season in the evening air...beautiful.

This was home until just a few years ago when we thought we'd try the sun and surf of Southwest Florida. This is where most of our family now lives.

Like my father-in-law who is nearing ninety. He lives in the home he bought brand new more than fifty years ago, where he raised his four children, and where watched his wife succumb to breast cancer a year after he retired early so they could finally travel.

But he needs help, and his youngest son, my husband, is a thousand miles away. We need to move closer, and we'll sell our home at enormous loss to make that happen.

Fortunately, we have a family of home-based businesses that allow us to work anywhere we can get online. We need to be near his dad, and we can make it happen.

My friend, who also lives in Virginia, cares for her father in her home. She works as a home health nurse, and because she's in business for herself, she can schedule her time around his needs. She and her husband are at a time in their lives where they have money and time to travel, but they feel that her father's care comes first.

We're the lucky ones.

I watched a news report recently about a woman who worked more hours to pay for the care her father required in her home. Did you see it? She set up cameras and filmed the woman she hired beat her father in his bed. This was a woman she trusted. Now, I don't know if this dutiful daughter (bless her heart) could work her job from home, but I bet she wishes she could so she could better oversea her father's care and spend time with him before he dies.

And I watched a giant moving truck today packing up my elderly neighbor to move her to her daughter's home after a serious stroke now prevents her from living in her dream retirement home here in Florida. I don't know how caring for her mother will affect her family.

How about you? Are you in a position to help your parents if they were to need you?

Now, I know that working from home is not for everyone.

But in these economic times a home-based business provides us with so many more choices.

We're thankful that we can make the move, that we can be around to help his dad and keep him company. We saw on our visit just how much that meant.

How much would it mean for you to have that flexibility?

How much would it mean for you to be in a position to care for your parents?

Look carefully at yourself...you can have what it takes.

Blessings,
Judy