A Place in Time: Care Givers for Their Elderly

In Mirrored Lives: Aging Children and Elderly Parents , Koch described his five years of caring for his ailing father. Here he tells the stories of others who have chosen to take on the care of aged relatives and friends, despite the daily emotional and physical stress of that role. The poignant recollections of those whose charges were afflicted with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or other debilitating diseases testify to a devotion that frequently entails social isolation, loss of independen c e, and sacrifice of financial, employment and other opportunities. Koch concludes that such caregivers give care not only because they feel obligated to, but because they value fragile elders as part of their own lives. Those who choose to detach themselves from the elderly in their lives and their shared past, he cautions, are ``condemned to an unassailable solitude.'' (Mar.)