Caring for the elderly requires lots of patience.

That's very excruciatingly hard for some of us, especially me. I'm not a patient person by nature, but I'm trying. It's just that I fail so often.

Nothing is more difficult for me than to be ready to go somewhere and having to wait an extra 30 minutes while my Mom finishes getting ready. Then there's the ritual of checking everything in the house such as the stove and iron to make sure nothing is still on. She always fears the house will burn down before we can get back. I don't know why. It's never happened.

But I was talking to a close friend of mine who has two parents in an assisted living facility. He had taken his one day off, a Saturday, to do errands with them. (Actually it is much easier to do errands without them, but as we know, they want to get out and go.)

He said after four hours of such tasks as taking them to the grocery store, they were finally arriving back at the facility where the front entrance was being painted with sand mixed with the paint. That was because the area was slippery and dangerous for the elderly to walk over, and they were trying to fix that as quickly as possible.

My friend saw the "wet paint" signs and warned his father who got out of the car first, not to walk through the wet paint on the sidewalk.

"My dad went right straight through the paint on his walker trailing the paint as he shuffled inside," my friend said.

"Then the next thing I noticed before I could stop her, my mom was on her walker doing the very same thing. They both got wet paint smeared all over the place. My nerves were already shot from the trip to the grocery store. All I could do was throw up my hands."

How many of us have felt the same way?

As we talked another friend pointed out that there simply isn't enough help out there for those of us caring for our aging parents. We need more advice. We need help.

That's the main reason for this site.

I think we're here to help each other. Please write in and share your stories and your frustrations. If we're all going to be honest with ourselves there are moments of total desperation, but thankfully those moments never last long.

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