The guilt and anguish of looking after elderly parents

In November 2008, Elizabeth Hay, author of the Giller Prize-winning novel Late Nights on Air (2007), received the phone call that would upend her life—and not hers alone, but those of her 88-year-old parents, Jean and Gordon, her older brothers Stu and Al, and her younger sister, Jeannie. A visiting nurse had found Jean dehydrated and barely fed, unable to get out of bed, where she had been trapped for days by what turned out to be an infected knee. Gordon was at a loss and too distraught