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By the age of 50, you might be forgiven for heaving a sigh of relief and dusting off the holiday brochures. You have worked hard, your children are grown, with homes of their own, your parents are comfortable. Take off your rose-tinted bifocals, you need your senses honed and you wits about you, you haven't finished yet.

I always knew when the phone rang after 10. p.m. that SOMEBODY was in trouble. My extrasensory perceptions did not extend to exactly which Somebody, but I was always right. Often, it would be either one of our widowed mothers. The one in the East had just lost her dentures and wanted her son to make a round trip of 140 miles to help her find them. A lot of comforting clichs and the suggestion that this was a lot to ask of a man who had just done a 12 hour day, with another due tomorrow, to turn out on a winter's night, made her calm down. She agreed to let son number two, living three miles away, conduct the search in the morning.

Meanwhile, mother in the West just could not sleep because there was somebody on the roof. She was a sensible, independent woman, so we really did worry. With little hope of catching a plane across the Irish Sea at 10.30 p.m. on a January night, we had to come up with something, anything. Advice given included, "close all the curtains, check the locks and turn on every light in the house." We held the phone with baited breath till she reported all accomplished and that the noises had ceased. She agreed to check with her friend next door in the morning, and phone the police if necessary, and thus another crisis was dealt with.

But we knew there would be more, as that is what happens when dealing with aging parents living too far away for help and close comfort. The best ways of dealing with it was to establish a network of trustworthy people, like neighbors, friends, doctor and pastor and to communicate with them regularly. They not only reassure your aging parent, they help to keep you sane. Which is how we coped during the last few years of our mothers' lives. That, and frequent visits, though when they came to us, many a vicious whispered fight took place between the spouses, under cover of darkness.

But the never-grown-up, grown up children are a different drain on the resources. They can be emotionally and financially burdensome at the odd time. As ever, the late phone call triggered the adrenalin rush of "what now?" We were relieved one night to find that the daughter's hysterical tears stemmed from a blocked toilet!

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