Thomas and Lorene’s caregiving story

Lorene Conley: My name is Lorene.

Thomas Conley: My name is Thomas. Me and Lorene, we met actually in high school. We were in typing class and I said, “That’s the girl that I'm going to marry.”

Lorene: And I don’t let him forget that, either. I have a little dog, a Shih Tzu who I love, Benji. My girls are grown, so what I do now, Benji has become the baby. And he is spoiled, yes. And I love to be around my family.

Thomas and I, as being primary caregivers for our parents, it’s interesting.

Thomas: My mother passed away, and I had to go over there and help my father out a whole lot. You know, that was my introduction to caring for someone. Because I had never had to do that. Not on that level.

Thomas: But then you see so many people that, they’re not in that position. Particularly, I operate a homeless shelter. And you see so many people that, they're only worried about the next day. It made me think that, wait a minute, we could be working every day and not really plan for ourselves for our future.

Why not just have something separate, another plan? When it gets hard with one of the parents, and sometimes it's overload, we have each other. But why not make it a little bit even easier for my girls? So, I learned through my mom the importance of long-term care.

Thomas: It is so important that individuals position themselves and see a bigger picture in life instead of that every day, living day-by-day picture.

Lorene: So we just want to make sure that we have something in place that my children can continue to live their life, and that we can also be taken care of, and have the best of care.