I'll be joining ABC's
Nightline as a contributor to the show. My first segment, which airs tonight, looks at America's seniors and the growing demand to meet the needs of this increasingly large population. As someone whose grandmother lived with her as child, I have always be sensitive to the issues facing the elderly in America. My grandma was one of the most important people in my life and I am still haunted and devastated by how she had to live in the latter part of her life.
My earliest memories include my grandma. Her husband, my grandfather was part of a small group of college students who got undergraduate and Master's degrees in America. He went to NYU for undergrad, and got his MBA from Univ. of Colorado. My grandmother was educated in Cambridge, England. Despite their high level degrees, when they came to America to escape the Communist Revolution in China, neither could get hired for work because they were Chinese. Too proud to do anything beneath his skill set, my grandfather refused to work leaving the responsibility of taking care of the family to my grandmother. She taught music during the day and labored in a restaurant kitchen at night while the family lived in a converted chicken coup. Eventually she scraped together enough money for them to open the first Chinese restaurant in Folsom, California.
To say that her life was tough would be to grossly understate how hard things were and the challenges she faced. As the eldest sister, she raised all of her siblings in Malaysia, raised her own children amidst huge hardships and would later go on to raise her grandchildren, my sister Laura and me.
When I was 17, my grandmother developed dementia and we could no longer care for her at home. We put her in multiple facilities--whatever we could afford with her Social Security which was meager at best--but it was hard for them to adequately take care of her because she kept trying to run away as she was constantly so disoriented.
The process of finding the appropriate home for my grandmother was torturous and I got an ugly introduction to the way seniors are regarded in America. In so many parts of the world, older folks are revered and taken care of very well. That is sadly not the case in this country.
As America's population of seniors explodes--it's expected to double in less than ten years--we may certainly have a crisis on our hands. Our Nightline segment looks into the explosive growth of the luxury market for retirees, but I can't help but wonder about those who are less fortunate. As the older end of the Baby Boomers ascend in age, we must ask if we're prepared to deal with this growing population of older Americans.
