Posted by Mary on August 13 2008 at 16:00:58:
Today´s New York Times features a story on by Times blogger Jane Gross on Rundy Purdy. Ms. Gross writes:
Rundy Purdy, 26 and a budding novelist, is the second of 12 children, home-schooled on his family’s 14-acre parcel “in the sticks,’’ as he puts it, outside Binghamton in upstate New York. That’s where Mr. Purdy lived, doing odd jobs to support his writing, until November 9, 2006.
That was the day Mr. Purdy took it upon himself to move just 30 miles away, but into a whole ‘nother world: his grandparents’ suburban home. There, Ivan Purdy Sr., now 80, was losing both mind and body to Alzheimer’s disease. His wife, Janice Purdy, now 76, was too debilitated by heart disease to care for her husband alone.
In this sprawling family — in size, not location, as most family members live nearby — how did this exhausting and heartbreaking task fall to Mr. Purdy? Because he volunteered. The details are complicated — and ultimately inconsequential. In his grandparents’ generation, everyone was too frail. In his parents’ generation, there were jobs, big families, illness and injury. In his generation, some were in college, others beginning careers and most too young.
Plus, Mr. Purdy says, with no false modesty, “I could see I was the most capable,’’ and also the first to admit that leaving grandpa and grandma alone much longer wasn’t possible. “They would have let it go to a crisis point,’’ he said by telephone last week. “I wasn’t comfortable with that. So I just made the decision.’’
Click on the link below to read the entire article by Ms. Gross, which also includes a link to Rundy Purdy´s blog.