Feeling the SQUEEZE The Sandwich Generation By WENDY SLEDD
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Life is busy in the Pierce household. Three teenage girls keep things bustling with their school and extra- curricular activities while mom, Anne, operates a home-based business, freelances as a seamstress for a local company, and is the glue, along with her husband, that holds her family together. In January, the Pierce household grew. Anne’s mom, Ellie Zietz, 89, moved in with the family after doctors said she could no longer live on her own. “She was not taking her medicine, eating properly and was very dehydrated. She fell in her backyard and could not get up. The temperatures were in the 40s, it was drizzling, and it was 10 hours before the neighbor found her. She got pneumonia,” Anne said. Ellie, who turns 90 in April, moved back and forth between the homes of her daughter and her son for several months before moving in permanently with Anne. “Mom was used to being on her own and then had to live with someone. It was hard for her to give up her independence,” Anne said. “She doesn’t like TEXAPPEALMAG.COM
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