Is elder care the new retirement? Not your elder care. The elder care you provide your parents. My wife and I retired in 1995 and moved to Henderson, where she had grown up and where her parents still lived. I left my job with the New York State Education Department. She gave up teaching piano, conducting a women's choral group, and directing community theater productions.

My wife's parents were in their 80s. Earlier, her father had suffered a heart attack and stroke. Her mother had serious problems with her circulation.

For the next eight years, we maintained two homes, provided meals for my wife's parents, and -- when their health declined further -- round-the-clock care, with financial assistance from my wife's siblings. Her parents passed away within a year and a half of each other, but we had the satisfaction of knowing that we helped them continue to live in their home, as they had desired.

We babies of the Great Depression and our younger siblings of the boomer generation are encountering this scenario more and more often. We don't cringe at the mention of "nursing home," as our parents did. We know of retirement centers that offer independent living, assisted living, and nursing care as their residents' needs change. We know about long-term health insurance and hospice.

But caring for our parents in their mature years reminds us of our own mortality and, perhaps worse, of the difficulties that may precede the end of life -- difficulties we would rather not impose on our children.

David J. Irvine

Henderson