An example of the “Pickle in the Middle”

Ralph & Rachel

Ralph and Rachel had been married forty-six years. Every autumn they closed up the brick colonial outside Springfield, Illinois, and every spring they opened up the little bungalow near Fort Myers, Florida — a rhythm that had worked for two decades of snowbird life. Lately, though, the rhythm was fraying. Ralph kept forgetting which house they were in when he woke up. Rachel had started writing the date on a whiteboard by the coffee maker, then found herself checking it three times before breakfast.

Their nephew Ray, 19, was heading into his sophomore year at U of I, working part-time to cover what his own parents couldn’t. Ralph and Rachel each had about $150,000 sitting in traditional IRAs — money they’d always quietly meant for Ray’s education, “when the time came.”

Watching each other more closely now, they’d started to wonder, half out loud, half to themselves: what if the time came for them first — for a nursing home, for memory care.