The Shock of Caring for Mom

By Gail Sheehy

For the Colbert family in our video, the creeping crisis of cognitive decline was hardly noticed by six of Helen Colbert’s seven children in the first two years. That's because Harriet, the seventh, took on all the responsibilities. The oldest daughter in a traditional, church-going African-American family, Harriet never married. She was living with her mother and father in a two-family house in a vintage neighborhood of Philadelphia when her dad began failing.

"Harriet took over as the primary caregiver for Dad and cared for him until he died," said her brother, Louis Colbert, a veteran social worker in the field of aging. Soon after being widowed, Helen Colbert, the usual fireball in the family, developed Parkinson’s disease and diabetes and began to lose her taste for life. She was 83.

• Continue reading Gail's journal about her visits with The Colberts.