The Day the 'Sandwich Generation' Got Real
Personal Perspective: Difficult decisions for the "sandwich generation."
Posted April 23, 2026 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
We are sitting here, husband and wife, on the edge of the bed.
Outside the window, a babbling brook winds its way around a golf course, palm trees sway back and forth in the breeze, and the fun and fantasy of our long-awaited and much-anticipated Disney World vacation stretch as far as our eyes can see. But we are sitting here, on the edge of the bed.
In the other room, the kids are waiting for us. Thousands of miles away from school and homework, they are as silly as the cartoons they are watching on TV. We hear them laughing . We hear them calling us. But we are sitting here, on the edge of the bed.
There has been news from home and it is not good. The cellphone call is still ringing in our ears, its repercussions unraveling before us like a thread of a tightly-knit sweater that just a minute ago was so comfortable and now it’s coming apart.
My husband’s mother has fallen down in her apartment. It’s her shoulder. It’s her heart.
My husband’s mind is on fast-forward: What now? What happens next? Will she be able to go back to her apartment? Will she need help? What should we do? What will she want to do? Why didn’t we talk about this? Why didn’t we plan for this?
Slow down, I tell him. She’s in the hospital. That’s all we know right now. That’s all we can know.
But taking one step at a time is not his nature. And in this particular instance, it’s made more difficult because he’s an only child. Ever since his dad died nearly 30 years ago, he’s known that his mother needs him. Depends on him. He’s her family. He’s all there is.
In the whirlwind of thoughts, odd as it may seem, what I can’t get out of my head is a TV commercial. Years ago, it was part of a campaign for John Hancock Financial Services.
What you see are two grandparents going around and around and around on a carousel laughing with their grandchildren. The images are nice enough. It’s the words on the screen that haunted me then and still do.
“Your children. Your parents. Yourself. Who do you love the least?”
It speaks to the heart of that "sandwich generation" thing we’ve heard and read and talked about so much before. And if there’s one person who could articulate the conflicting emotions of the baby boomers when they’re feeling the pull of their aging parents on the one hand and the tug of their kids on the other, it would be my husband.
And why wouldn’t he? After all, he wrote the commercial.
But never had it hit home like this before. Never had either of us felt it as keenly as we do in this one moment of uncertainty, sitting here on the edge of the bed.
"Who do you love the least?"
I’m sure that when my husband wrote that question, he suspected what the answer would be. And now that he’s here with me on this vacation, in this land where nothing is real and yet everything is suddenly way too real, he knows the truth.
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Rita Lussier, a former Providence Journal columnist, is the author of the memoir, And Now, Back to Me.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.