It was usually around 1 a.m. that the bell would ring, telling me that my elderly mom was headed for the bathroom. And because it wasn’t safe for her to go alone, that meant I was on my way there, too.  

I’d moved in with my 95-year-old mom when she could no longer live alone. I was a 59-year-old broadcast journalist at the time, hosting a radio program for the NPR affiliate in San Francisco and beginning work on a new film for the PBS “Frontline” series.  

My life was full, but flexible, and it just made sense, I thought, to move in and help.  

But, of course, there was so much I didn’t know. I didn’t know how exhausted I’d become. I didn’t know I’d be capable of getting so angry. I didn’t know that I’d be tested in ways I never dreamed or rewarded in ways I never imagined. And I sure didn’t know that after I moved back in, my mom would live for another full decade before passing away at the age of 105.  

The choice I made is one millions of Americans will soon confront. Did you know that someone turns 65 in this country every 8 seconds? That means that that every 24 hours we add about 11,000 more 65 year olds to our population. And we are nowhere close to being ready for that reality.  

Most people think Medicare pays for long-term eldercare. It does not. Medicaid, which assists lower-income Americans, sometimes provides coverage, but largely at long-term care facilities. That’s not a reliable plan, not when COVID-19 killed 184,000 residents of those institutions during the first year of the pandemic.  

Eldercare is of particular importance here in the state of Maine. As you probably know, Maine has the highest median age of any state in the country, and by the year 2030 the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that a third of Maine’s population will be over the age of 65. That’s why Maine state government is to be commended for allocating a portion of the funds it received through the American Rescue Plan to assist caregivers. But that assistance, though worthy, only covers a small portion of caregiving’s cost. 

I was extraordinarily lucky to be able to hire wonderfully skilled caregivers to care for my mom during the day so that I could continue to work—my responsibility was to cover nights and weekends. But do you know why I could hire and pay for good help? It’s because my parents purchased a home in 1950 in the San Francisco Bay Area for $15,000. Needless to say, when I moved in nearly sixty years later, it was worth just a tad more. That meant I could borrow against the house again and again to help pay for quality care.  

I was lucky. But should good care depend on good luck?  

That why we must find a way to help not only those who desperately need care, but also those who provide it.  

When I was caring for my mom, I was accompanied by remarkable women, all immigrant Americans, all women of color, all women for whom English was a second or even third language. My care partners brought to America a deep cultural understanding that caring for the old is part of life’s bargain. I will always be indebted to them, not only for the care they provided but for teaching me that caregiving is fundamentally an act of love, one that must be renewed each and every day.  

But in the United States, the importance of that work is not honored in the way it deserves. According to the Bureau of labor Statistics, the average wage for home health care workers last year was around $14 an hour, which means that 1 in 7 home health care workers live below the poverty line. We have to do better than that.  

America needs a national eldercare plan that makes loving care possible for all. It’s as simple and as important as that.  

Being able to ensure your loved ones are treated with tenderness, dignity and respect is not something that should depend on luck or politics. It should depend on the kind of nation we want the U.S. to be, a nation that honors both those who need care and those who provide it.   

Dave Iverson is a retired broadcast journalist and the author of the caregiving memoir, “Winter Stars: An Elderly Mother, an Aging Son and Life’s Final Journey.” He divides his time between Boothbay Harbor Maine and California. He’ll present a book talk at the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library on Saturday, Aug. 24 at 10:30 a.m.