Weather permitting, Kappy Lundy and Barbara Thompson are heading out to Vancouver, Wash., on Saturday night to have a holiday dinner with the parents of their daughter’s husband.
Yes, these women both mothered the same children — now grown and with children of their own. Ms. Lundy is their biological parent; Ms. Thompson is the stepmother who married their father after he and Ms. Lundy divorced.
But that doesn’t really begin to describe their relationship. Over more than 40 years, these two have been friends and what they call “wife-in-laws,” in addition to moms-in-tandem. Now, they’re so close they feel like sisters, they say.
There’s yet another dimension to this relationship that makes it so unusual: Ms. Lundy, who is 71, has become a caregiver for Ms. Thompson, who’s 67 and was given a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment in 2009.
One wife caring for another, through thick and through thin – think about that. It’s another example of how the new old age is spawning unusual — and creative — alliances.
Ms. Lundy went with Ms. Thompson to eight months of classes on memory loss offered by the Alzheimer’s Association chapter in Portland, Ore., where the two women live. And now they go together to monthly meetings of the Wild Bunch, a group of people with dementia and their caregivers who’ve come together to provide each other emotional support. (More on that group to come in a future post.)
Ms. Lundy talks to Ms. Thompson every day and tries to get together with her once a week.
“We’re just really good friends, and we want to know what’s going on, what are you doing, like everybody else,” said Ms. Thompson, who moved into an independent living facility in Portland nearly a year ago, after Ms. Lundy helped pack up her previous apartment.
Ms. Lundy, who lives across town, about 20 minutes away, said: “We’ll go to happy hour together and have a little toddy and maybe a nice meal. And crack up – she makes me laugh.”
Both women grew up in Eugene, Ore., but became friends later, after they moved to Portland in their 20s. Their favorite haunt was the Goose Hollow Inn, a tavern where artists, architects and writers would congregate. Ms. Lundy and her husband began to socialize regularly with Ms. Thompson and her first husband.
“She’s full of life and fun – a gypsy at heart,” is how Ms. Thompson describes Ms. Lundy.
“She’s funny and smart and a really good listener,” is how Ms. Lundy describes Ms. Thompson.
When Ms. Lundy’s marriage to Phil Thompson — a handsome bear of a man, with a charismatic personality and an artistic sensibility — began falling apart, both members of the couple turned to their friend Barbara for support. “She listened to me and my anger, and she listened to him about how he was hurting,” says Ms. Lundy, who was separated from her husband for a year before the divorce was official.
There were no hard feelings when Phil’s feelings toward Barbara turned romantic, Ms. Lundy says. But she didn’t see the couple much during subsequent years of work and travel abroad. During those years, her children, Jessica and David, stayed with their father in Portland.
Eventually, Ms. Lundy came home and was invited to holidays at the Thompson house. She grew close to Barbara again and let go of negative feelings toward her former husband, she said. Over time, they became bound together as family.
“It’s incredible,” their daughter said. “They’re just really caring for each other and not threatened by each other.
“My dad got a big kick out of it and would always introduce them as ‘my wives.’”
When Phil Thompson died in August 2008, both women were at his bedside. And when Ms. Thompson started having memory problems months later, Ms. Lundy was one of the first to notice. “We could see she wasn’t remembering things, but she said, ‘This is my grief,’” Ms. Lundy recalled. It became clear something else might be going on as problems persisted and a doctor’s evaluation yielded the mild cognitive impairment diagnosis.
Ms. Thompson described her reaction to that information: “It was scary. Very scary. I didn’t know if it meant the end of my freedom, of my ability to just live my own life.”
For her part, Ms. Lundy said: “The hardest thing for me from the very beginning was to see my party pal and my dear, dear friend changing. It was very frustrating to me. And very hurtful. I wanted to support her. But sometimes I didn’t have the patience. Because, you know, she wasn’t acting like Barbara. It’s taken a while, but slowly, slowly, slowly and surely, I’ve accepted that this is who Barbara is.”
Ms. Lundy isn’t the only caregiver for Ms. Thompson: Jessica and David, her stepchildren, and two close friends also help out, as needed.
For Ms. Lundy, the uncertainty associated with her friend’s mild cognitive impairment diagnosis is hard to live with. Will it progress to dementia? Will it stay stable, or even get better? The doctor can’t say, and “all that not-knowing business is unsettling,” she said.
Becoming a caregiver has “made our friendship even stronger, I think,” Ms. Lundy says. “We’re closer now. Even though we’ve been friends for years and years, I never felt responsible for her before.”
For Ms. Thompson, what’s hardest is living alone after nearly 30 years of being married to Phil and worrying about losing her independence — notably, her ability to continue driving.
“I feel isolated with the disease,” she said. “And being alone in a new apartment with lots of strangers here has been a little difficult.”
“I’m very grateful to Kappy,” Ms. Thompson said. “I didn’t used to feel that she would be this way. She was always doing her own thing. But she has definitely reached out, beyond what most people would do.”
On Christmas the two women will be at Jessica’s house, arriving at around noon, after the grandchildren have opened their presents, and staying through the late afternoon. After the holidays, Ms. Lundy says she plans to take Ms. Thompson out more often and “have a couple of beers and a laugh and be happy and just be Barbie and Kappy,” two old friends, enjoying each other’s company.
This is the one of the most unusual caregiving relationships I know of. It reaffirms what I’ve been told several times: You never know who will end up being there for you when you need help. Sometimes the people we expect will care for us don’t, and others step forward. Has that been your experience?
The New Old Age Blog: The Ex-Wives Club
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