As parents age, it's time to rethink allegiance to independence

BOSTON — This is probably not the best week to air any reservations about the American passion for independence. After all, we don't have fireworks for Dependence Day. We don't hold parades to celebrate Interdependence Day. We don't get a holiday for Connections.

Our allegiance to independence as a nation is Yankee doodle dandy. But I'm wondering whether our ode to independence as a people is a bit over the top. We foster an unrealistic view of the way we live, not just in the designated years of caring for our children but in the undesignated years when we care for our elders.

Maybe independence is too crisply defined as "exemption from reliance on, or control by, others; direction of one's own affairs without interference."

This comes to mind because here in Massachusetts, we've had five serious car accidents involving elders in the past month. An 86-year-old struck an elderly man in a crosswalk. A 93-year-old drove through the window of a Wal-Mart, injuring six people. An 89-year-old killed a 4-year-old child.

Yes, I know. An octogenarian may be no greater a menace on the highway than a 35-year-old texting while driving. But the spate of accidents predictably prompted a call to require regular testing of everyone over 85. This, in turn, prompted one elder in a car-dependent suburb to lament, "It would ruin me. I'm so dependent on it. If I couldn't drive, I'd have to be dependent on someone else."

Somewhere along the way, we have to acknowledge that there are worse things than being dependent. And somewhere, we have to wonder why we turn to legislation when we need conversation. Looking to the state to take the keys from dad is rather like outsourcing our children's sex education to the schools because we are too tongue-tied to talk about sex at home.

As a society, and as individuals, we are woefully unprepared for aging, even when it's our parents. We have 76 million baby boomers already entering their 60s. As one of them, Paula Span, says, "When my dad was my age, both of his parents had died, and he was retired. I'm never going to be able to retire, and I might be caring for my dad when I'm in my 70s and he's in his 90s."

Span has written "When the Time Comes," a welcome "support group in print" for anyone with aging parents. She leads a compassionate and eyes-wide-open journey with families struggling to do the right thing from the car-key moment to hospice.