The Sandwich Generation
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
Some 20 million middle-aged Americans are caring for their children as well as their aging parents. When filmmaker-photographer pair Julie Winokur and Ed Kashi took in Winokur's 83-year-old father, they decided to document their own story, exposing their personal lives with unflinching candor.
Citation
Main credits
Winokur, Julie (filmmaker)
Winokur, Julie (film director)
Winokur, Julie (screenwriter)
Winokur, Julie (interviewee)
Kashi, Ed (filmmaker)
Kashi, Ed (videographer)
Kashi, Ed (photographer)
Kashi, Ed (interviewee)
Storm, Brian (film producer)
Other credits
[Photography & Video: Ed Kashi].
Distributor subjects
Aging, family issues, American Studies, sociology, healthcare, sociology; Expository; WOKeywords
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My name is Julie Winokur. I\'m 42 years old.
00:00:08.667 --> 00:00:11.867
I live in New Jersey and I\'m a filmmaker.
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Hey Isabel, did you find the clips? Yes.
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Okay. Do you want me to put them in?
Come here.
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I\'m taking care of my 83-year-old father.
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I have two children and they
are 8 and 11 years old.
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My name is Ed Kashi. I\'m 48
and I\'m a photojournalist.
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We lived in California. We
lived in San Francisco.
00:00:33.634 --> 00:00:36.900
And my father was living in New Jersey.
00:00:36.901 --> 00:00:41.500
We uprooted our lives, our
children, our business
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and we moved it 3000 miles
in order to be there
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to support my father.
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It\'s a huge sacrifice at a time
in my life that I feel like,
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it\'s like a prime time of my life
and I basically gave it away.
00:00:54.234 --> 00:00:58.329
I\'m doing yoga in the living room.
You going to come do yoga?
00:00:58.330 --> 00:01:01.669
You\'ve got that Einstein look going.
00:01:01.670 --> 00:01:05.833
You didn\'t tell me you
were a mad scientist.
00:01:05.834 --> 00:01:08.132
I am part of the sandwich generation.
00:01:08.133 --> 00:01:10.833
It\'s people who are taking
care of their children
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and taking care of their parents.
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And apparently I\'m one of
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something like 20 million Americans
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who find themselves in that position.
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And it really wasn\'t part of our plan.
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My father\'s 83 and he has dementia.
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And the dementia is presenting
more and more every day.
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He has good days, he has bad
days, he has days where we
00:01:35.801 --> 00:01:38.867
kind of have the old Herbie
back and he cracks some jokes.
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Did you notice that?
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You guys, I\'m teaching him
how to duck and weave.
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They\'re swinging to hit me, huh?
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Yeah. Exactly.
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And then we have days where
he just rambles incoherently
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and nobody has any idea where his mind is.
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We\'ll see if you\'re up to it.
We\'ll go take a walk again.
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[inaudible] eggs.
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Eggs. I think we\'ve got eggs.
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My husband
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Ed and I did a along term project
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called Aging in America.
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It gave us a lot of insight into
what the aging process is about.
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In one way I can see all
the gifts bearing fruit
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from what I learned as a journalist
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in terms of how to care for
him, how to touch him,
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how to react to ways he might behave.
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Now I\'m comfortable with that stuff because
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I understand it.
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Maybe it\'s also because I\'m a parent.
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Ed and I really thought we
knew what we were doing.
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We really felt like experts,
quote unquote experts.
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We had seen a lot of aging.
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We saw what it meant to take care of an
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older person. We really felt
like we knew the score.
00:02:53.968 --> 00:02:57.733
But I think until you\'re having
to deal with it yourself,
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and set up all of the
support services yourself,
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nobody is prepared.
00:03:04.670 --> 00:03:07.967
Okay, go ahead, you can sit down.
Oh. Are you okay?
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Yeah. All right.
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My dad needs help shaving, bathing,
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dressing, getting his shoes on and off.
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He has to be given pills twice a day.
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His meds need to be managed
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so we get the right pills
at the right times.
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His physical needs are
actually going to get greater
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as time goes on.
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Do you have it? I want
you to do it yourself.
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As much as you can, you do yourself. Good.
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He\'s a lovely man and he\'s an unassuming
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person and he\'s a great presence
in the house. I\'m really
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happy my kids are going
to be exposed to that.
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But it has added a layer
of noise in our lives.
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Listen to me. Isabel, I need your help.
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My mom and dad have been
much more stressed out
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because there\'s more
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things to do in the house.
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And I think that Poppy is a lot of work.
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I think it\'s good that he\'s
living at our house because
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he\'s getting old, so we can
take care of him better.
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It\'s pretty cool having my
grandpa in the house with us,
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but it\'s a little stressful for my parents.
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I\'m always struggling with the,
with the feeling that I don\'t
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have enough time and attention
to pour on the children.
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I\'m really scared that
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they\'re going to feel like
the day poppy moved in
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is when they lost mommy and daddy.
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Trying to parent through this is
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overwhelming and frankly if it wasn\'t
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for Debbie Robertson who is an au pair
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who we have from South Africa
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I don\'t know how we would
get through this time.
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I really couldn\'t handle this alone.
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And I need my husband\'s
emotional support for this.
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Even though it\'s mostly
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women in the position I\'m in,
00:05:02.167 --> 00:05:04.800
where they\'re taking care
of kids and parents,
00:05:04.801 --> 00:05:10.533
I think that today men are being
asked a lot more to participate.
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You know, the role of men
is changing dramatically.
00:05:15.330 --> 00:05:16.933
And especially when, you
know, my husband and I
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both work. It\'s not like
I\'m a stay at home mom.
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I\'m not a stay at home caregiver.
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I feel pretty tightly wound.
Pretty tightly wound
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I feel like I\'m going to start
having convulsions soon.
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There is not a single
minute of the day that
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somebody doesn\'t need something from me.
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So if I\'m not careful I\'m
going to get run down.
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On a selfish level I\'ve had very
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mixed feelings about
Herb moving in with us.
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On that level of where you just
have to do what you have to do
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and it doesn\'t matter how
it inconveniences you
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or how it changes your life,
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you just have to do it,
there\'s no question.
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We\'re about to sell my dad\'s
house and he\'s been in that
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house for about 40 years.
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I will have another house, maybe.
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You have another house already.
You have our house Herbie.
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That\'s – I need two homes.
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What do you need two homes for?
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You have a mistress that
you\'re not telling us about?
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How did you know?
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I\'m not stupid.
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I was up early in the morning.
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Look at that, my point shoes.
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Yesterday I had
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haulers in and we moved a lot
of stuff out of my dad\'s house.
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And unfortunately dad was
there the whole day,
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so he had to witness his
house being dismantled.
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And I think it took a huge toll on him.
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Herbie do you want to keep those?
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What? Do you want to keep those? Yeah.
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Oh you do. All right. Just put them aside.
We\'ll take it.
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I realize that nothing will be the same.
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By the night time he
wasn\'t making any sense,
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and then last night in
the middle of the night
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he got up to go to the
bathroom and he fell down.
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So this morning when we went downstairs
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we found him on the floor,
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and he had probably been on the
floor for a number of hours.
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We\'re right now at a loss of how to
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deal with his medical condition.
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I\'ve got to start calling doctors
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because even if I have to leave a message
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with an answering service,
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at least it means when
they walk in the door
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that there\'s an urgent message.
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He\'s clearly in a state
and he\'s not making sense
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and not able
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to sleep comfortably.
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I\'m feeling that, you know,
we need to deal with this,
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and I\'m a little at a loss of what to do
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and where to take him.
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Herb has gone into a free fall
since he went into the hospital.
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It is very clear that the hospital
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does not actually really care about him.
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He\'s very low priority because of his age,
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because of his condition. It\'s
become startlingly clear to me.
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All I\'m thinking is get him home,
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get him around loved ones,
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make sure he eats,
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make sure he\'s stimulated.
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Who cares what the diagnosis is?
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You know, I just – I don\'t know how long
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we will be able to handle
it at home, quite honestly.
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I don\'t know how we\'re going to function,
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and you know, maintain our lives,
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you know, as he slips.
00:09:03.467 --> 00:09:06.833
We\'re in a period now of tremendous tumult.
00:09:06.834 --> 00:09:09.800
I\'m hoping that
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once the dust settles
that we are in a position
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where we have the care we need for Herbie
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and then Julie and I can
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get back to some semblance of our lives.
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I can totally respect and
appreciate anybody who says,
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I don\'t want to have my
parent come live with me
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because I couldn\'t handle it.
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I understand that.
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There are days where I feel that way.
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I kind of wish this problem
would just go away.
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There is a part of me that thinks,
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God, wouldn\'t it just be
easier if he passed now?
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But you know, every time I\'m
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around him, when he shows
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the spirit to live,
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it\'s like that\'s all I need to see.
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And then that whole, it\'s like
the parent part of me kicks in,
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where it\'s like okay, whatever you need.
Whatever you need.
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Alright, you get away this morning.
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That was good, right?
00:10:10.367 --> 00:10:15.333
Yeah, damn right.
00:10:15.334 --> 00:10:20.600
Holidays are here again, da, da, they know.
00:10:20.601 --> 00:10:23.801
You in the back!
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I\'ve already told my kids,
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I\'m going to move in with you some day.
I hope you don\'t mind,
00:10:30.467 --> 00:10:31.967
because I\'m coming.
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I\'d much rather be with my kids
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than be with a bunch of
strangers in a facility.
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I will let you guys move in, into a
00:10:40.300 --> 00:10:42.099
big humongous bed,
00:10:42.100 --> 00:10:44.233
and then you will press
this button and then
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your bed would go to my room, and then
00:10:48.968 --> 00:10:51.601
and then I will wake up and help you.
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I feel that this period in a way
is this sort of hidden gift.
00:10:56.100 --> 00:10:58.333
You would never think it at the moment,
00:10:58.334 --> 00:11:01.166
because it\'s so traumatic and stressful,
00:11:01.167 --> 00:11:04.833
and sad. But in
00:11:04.834 --> 00:11:08.399
the long run the kids are
being given this lesson,
00:11:08.400 --> 00:11:11.867
this life lesson in what it
means to care for someone.
00:11:11.868 --> 00:11:17.100
What it means to come
through for someone else.