Why talking to your aging parents before a crisis is a gift to everyone
In 2014, I was working at a senior living community — a continuum of care that offered everything from independent living to memory care. It was a beautiful community, and drew people in to explore its options.
Steve was one of those people. He came in to explore options for his aging parents, who were still living at home. They had a little memory loss, but were otherwise doing well. He toured, asked good questions, and left. Nothing urgent. Just a family being thoughtful.
About a month later, my phone rang.
Steve’s parents had gotten in their car , the way they had thousands of times before, to make a routine trip to the grocery store. They never arrived. Somewhere along the way, they became confused. They kept driving. Eight hours later, deep in the Blue Mountains, a park ranger found them: disoriented, dehydrated, and frightened, but ok.
Steve came in and cried on my shoulder.
He was an only child, he told me. No siblings to call, no one to process it with. And because of how serious the situation had become, he felt he had no choice but to move his parents into memory care immediately. The decision had been made for him by circumstance, and it was tearing him apart.
Then he said something I have never forgotten.
“I just wished I had talked to them a tiny bit about their wishes. Then I would have known what they wanted. Instead of me having to make this choice.”
That sentence has stayed with me ever since.
Because I also met the other kind of family. Adult children who came in and said, quietly and with relief: “Mom always said if she ever needed more support, she wanted to move here.” Those families weren’t riddled with guilt. They weren’t making impossible decisions alone in a crisis. They were simply honoring a wish their parent had already expressed. The hard conversation had already happened, and it had changed everything.
That contrast is exactly why I do this work.
Having these conversations before a crisis isn’t just about protecting adult children from the weight of impossible decisions. It’s about honoring our aging parents, making sure their voice is part of the story, even as their health changes. It’s about building the kind of connection that means when the hard moments come, you’re not scrambling to guess what they would have wanted. You already know.
My hope is a world where this is common practice. Where families move through these seasons not with tension and silence, but with closeness, because the important things were said while there was still time to say them.
Not decisions made in crisis. Just a daughter or son, staying present with someone they love.
That’s what these conversations are for.