I am trying to find new work while I still have Judy.
That is the reality. Not: I am grieving my father fully and taking the time I need to process his death. Not: I am on a meaningful journey of self-discovery through caregiving. Just: unemployment in rural Washington while caregiving for someone with dementia, looking for jobs that may not exist here in the kind of quantity that changes the math.
Grief doesn’t pause for financial necessity. The job applications go out in the same days that the grief is happening. The interviews — when there are interviews — happen in the same weeks as the Medicaid applications and the medication management and the repeating of the same answers to the same questions Judy will have again tomorrow.
AARP documents caregivers spending an average of $7,242 annually out of pocket on care costs. Add unemployment on top of that and the math simply does not work, regardless of how carefully you manage it. Marketplace has covered how caregiving costs are rising faster than inflation. The gap between what care costs and what caregivers can sustain is not closeable through personal discipline.
The Surgeon General’s loneliness advisory identified economic anxiety as one of the compounding factors in the isolation epidemic — the combination of financial pressure and social disconnection that turns manageable difficulty into something closer to crisis. Rural isolation during financial uncertainty during active caregiving during active grief is that combination in concentrated form.
I am not making the best of a difficult situation in some inspirational way. I am navigating it day by day, with the tools I have, in a set of circumstances that do not resolve cleanly. Job applications while caregiving. Grief while unemployed. That is not an inspiring story. It is just the specific reality of this period of my life, told honestly, because honesty is the only thing that helps anyone in the same situation feel less alone in it.
