It's 9:40 on a Tuesday night and your phone rings. It's your mom's neighbor, or maybe it's your dad himself, sounding a little too calm. There was a fall, or chest pain, or confusion that came out of nowhere, and now an ambulance is on its way to the emergency room. You live twenty minutes away, or you live in another state, and either way, your first thought is the same: I need to be there right now, and I'm not. If you've lived through this moment, you know the particular k

You've been worried. Maybe it's something specific, a near-miss with a fall, a medication that seems off, a kitchen that doesn't look quite as tidy as it used to. Or maybe it's vaguer than that, just a general sense that things aren't quite the same as they were a year ago and you're not sure what to do about it. Here's what most families do in that situation: they wait. They tell themselves they'll keep an eye on things. They hope the feeling passes. And more often than not,