Excerpts taken from The Press-Enterprise Newspaper – Tuesday, September 9, 2003.

“Giving with care …

Louis Buckley wanted only the best for Mary, his frail 90-year old mom.

Yet trying to be a good son put Buckley, a minister and counselor, under gut-churning stress that proved deadly.

“It was hard,” said his widow, Alexandra Joseph, in a phone interview.  “It was a nightmare.”

In January, Mary was hospitalized with kidney failure after living for several years in the couple’s home.

Joseph said her husband had been negotiating with a case worker not to discharge his mother to a nursing home in Corona.  He wanted to find a care facility near his Temecula home.

“Mary was an integral part of our lives … who deserved to have her family nearby so we could see her everyday,” Joseph said.

Minutes after a phone conversation about his mom’s transfer, Buckley, a previously healthy 66-year old, had a fatal heart attack.  Then his mother died in April.

A caregiver is any unpaid [or paid] person who assists a physically and/or mentally incapacitated parent, spouse, friend or neighbor with activities of daily living.

Caregivers also may handle financial and legal affairs, arrange for health care and make medical decisions when the elderly or ailing person cannot, said George F. Dickerman, an elder-law attorney in Riverside.

“If it’s a trustworthy person, there’s no problem,” Dickerman said.

“But subjected to coercion, an elderly person may no longer have the energy to fight back.”