The Wealth That Saves People — and the Crisis When It’s Missing
If there is one truth I wish every policymaker, employer, and community leader understood about aging, it’s this:
Older adults are not dying because their bodies fail.
They’re dying because people disappear.
Every day in this work, I see what abandonment looks like up close — not always intentional, not always dramatic, but real. Sometimes it’s family that drifts. Sometimes it’s friends who assume “someone else” is checking in. Sometimes it’s the quiet unraveling of relationships after decades of hard living.
And when there is no one left?
Outcomes change.
Care changes.
Even death changes.
I’ve seen the opposite too — what happens when a single person refuses to disappear.
There was a man who had alienated almost his entire world. He was difficult, blunt, and sometimes unkind. But he had one friend from his military years — a woman who had every reason to step back but never erased him. She didn’t do daily care, but she made sure he wasn’t invisible. Her presence meant staff paid closer attention. It meant decisions didn’t fall into a void. It meant he had an easier death than he ever could have had alone.
Another man had an estranged daughter — a fractured relationship, a lifetime of unresolved pain. But she never walked away. She stayed enough to anchor him, enough to make sure he wasn’t abandoned to the system. And because she stayed, his final chapter had dignity.
And then there’s my own family.
My dad drove four hours round-trip every single day to be with my grandmother at the end of her life. Not because the system asked him to, but because without him, she would have had no one. That’s what aging in America demands now: hours on the road, family members quitting jobs, rearranging their entire lives, quietly absorbing the consequences of a system that cracks the minute someone doesn’t have support.
This is the part we’re not saying out loud:
**The greatest predictor of how someone dies isn’t their diagnosis.
It’s whether they’ve been abandoned.**
The presence of one loved person changes everything — the care plan, the decisions made, the oversight, the safety, the emotional experience, the trajectory of decline.
Facilities do better work when someone is involved.
Hospitals make better decisions when someone can advocate.
Staff move faster, take issues more seriously, and catch problems earlier when there is even one name to call.
When no one is there — when a person is truly alone — the system quietly collapses around them.
And here’s where it becomes a workforce issue:
Maine cannot function if we continue to abandon our oldest citizens
because the burden doesn’t disappear — it transfers.
It transfers to:
daughters and sons who leave the workforce
neighbors who step in because no one else will
employers who lose skilled workers
facilities that become de facto family
nurses and aides who carry the emotional load alone
and a state workforce where 18% of workers are expected to quit or reduce hours to provide care for someone aging
We talk about economic development, labor shortages, and productivity as if they exist in isolation.
They don’t.
Every abandoned older adult becomes a workforce problem.
Every supported older adult stabilizes the system.
As Maine gets older — and as more people reach old age without partners, children, or family nearby — this divide will only widen:
Those with someone will age safely.
Those with no one will not.
This is the wealth I’ve witnessed — the kind you can’t bank, can’t save, can’t fake, and can’t replace.
And if we don’t address abandonment, if we don’t build structures that catch people who stand alone, we will keep losing workers, families, and entire generations to a care system that relies on heroism because we refuse to build anything stronger.
The truth is simple and unavoidable:
The future of Maine’s workforce depends on whether older adults have someone who won’t walk away.
That is the wealth that matters now — and the wealth we must protect.
