This week I found myself thinking more about the Navy’s Family Care Plan than I have in a long time.  The plan is not limited to the Navy, but actually exists across our entire military—and I would imagine that most military organizations have a similar version. It is what it sounds like: a guideline that defines how dependents will be looked after when a sailor is called to duty, sick, on watch, or in any way unavailable. The document must be reviewed annually, and this requirement helps to ensure that our fighting force is always ready to deploy globally. 

I’m thinking about the Family Care Plan as my family runs into another one of those “oh crap” situations, where vague plans suddenly need to be tested out in real time and we are left realizing that vague plans are about as reliable as trusting that our government will not shut down again in a few hours time.  Decisions that impact real people and their families require serious discussions where we bear in mind who will pay the cost if we do not come up with a real plan.

It’s not worth talking about in specifics, but even from my perch across the Atlantic Ocean my heart was sinking as I knew my siblings were springing into action to make a difficult situation less difficult. That said, I’m fairly confident that my parents have little interest in what I write, so I’m not afraid to declare that they come from a generation where they neither think it is necessary—nor should they—divulge their physical, financial or personal struggles. For sure, they’d just rather be left to their own devices until some future unknowable date when everything suddenly fades out and somehow the details will be sorted out. I get that—but only to a certain extent.  I’m talking about when this behaviour starts to impact us, the next generation, and we are suddenly grasping at straws and trying to stitch together a solution with only pieces of knowledge. 

I am lucky enough to say that my parents are in their later 70s and late 80s. That in itself is a real gift that I don’t take for granted. But on the same token, their era is not one that needed to consider much a family care plan. There was the neighborhood support system, and we ourselves were more than content to be latchkey kids. And it was easy to be like this because none of the five of us had special needs requiring extra supervision. This, especially, is something that I realize was a real privilege.  Especially in the intervening years as my family grows and we now have family members who never hope to qualify for a latchkey.  For these family members, there absolutely has to be a Family Care Plan in place. One that everyone both knows about and agrees to…because when it is absent, suddenly folks are called upon to do things that I can well imagine test the outer limits of their resources. And sanity. I know that I am speaking in generalities here—but it’s only to provide a bit of privacy for everyone involved. 

I am not sure it is even worth me sitting here and declaring that every parent, kid, partner or spouse needs to take stock of the loved ones around them and see if there are gaps where there should be plans put in place. Just kind of hoping that all goes well when you get old and nobody will ever need to step in to care for your dependents is kind of nuts—and in the most cold terms, it is irresponsible. Of note, even as I call it irresponsible, I will also say that these kinds of conversations are really hard and emotional; none of us would rather be spending our good hours talking about the What Ifs.

I remember when my Dad got real sick and I decided to create a shared Google Document that all of us kids could consult in the event that one of us to suddenly jump in and have a good sense of what the heck was going on with him from a medical standpoint: his doctor, the meds he was on, his last medical appointments. Basic stuff, really—but also stuff that nobody else really knows besides the person living in that skin. After I created this document, I decided to create one for my mother as well. I thought getting her information would be as cut and dry as it was for my father—but I was quickly reminded that these are two individuals with their own minds.

“I don’t need to bother you kids with that stuff,” she told me. I was stonewalled repeatedly until I decided to leave it be. There’s only so much I can do—and at some point, I also had to respect her wishes. It’s not like I have the perfect answer for how to do everything in life.  But even if I couldn’t get her health details down, I did keep in mind that she has an adult dependent child that will always require around the clock care. And while I had vague ideas of what her Family Care Plan might be for him….it wasn’t something that I spent much time thinking about. Until this past week. 

At this stage, things are more or less sorting themselves out.  At least for now. And I know this because my siblings have stepped up and done hard things that they would rather not be doing. That’s just how life is when we are all adults with our own individual life plans.  And I’d like to reach out and ask my mother if she’s thought things through a bit more, now that she’s had a health scare and could not function as she is used to. There absolutely needs to be a better plan in place—because none of us is getting any younger. For her situation, this particular need for care will always be the same. 

I’m trying to work up the mental energy to ask my mother—as she’s mending because the memory is still fresh—if she’s given this more thought. Can she bring herself to come up with a more viable plan for the next time she is unable to even care for herself. Maybe I will wait a week and ask—and maybe my self-sufficient siblings and I can band together and help her have this hard conversation. I’m still thinking about this. And that’s why I’m thinking about the Navy’s Family Care Plan.  It can be easy to gripe about all of the paperwork that the Navy forces you to do in the name of being prepared and organized—but in this case, the fact that they make you do the hard thinking from the start—that honestly makes things easier as you go along.