Inheriting More Than Land: The Unexpected Responsibility of a Caretaker’s Final Days

I wonder how many are dying alone, without the support of friends or loved ones?

Sometimes you know things are happening but until they impact your life personally, it’s easier to ignore and not think about.

That is the situation that my sister and I find ourselves in with the caretaker of my dad’s property in North Idaho.

Let me go back and fill you in, in case you aren’t familiar with the situation. Almost exactly 2 years ago my dad passed away abruptly from esophageal cancer, and we inherited his 25 acres in rural North Idaho. There had been a caretaker on his property for many many years who had actually just recently left when my dad got sick, but sadly the property he had moved onto was also owned by someone with recently diagnosed terminal cancer so he agreed to come back to my dad’s property and continue with the caretaking after my dad passed.

It was truly a blessing and allowed my sister and I to continue operating his Airbnb, and even turn his primary residence into another additional Airbnb on the property, while still living hours away in different states. There is a lot to be done on 25 acres, and Rich handled it all like a champ. He kept the grass mowed and the trails trimmed up, he filled propane tanks and restocked supplies, he cared for the chickens and tended the garden, and he would clean both the cabins in between guests, do laundry, and probably many other things around the property that I’m not even aware of. It’s a very unique set up that my dad had, with many systems invented and built himself over the 50+ years that he lived there, so it’s not a situation where it would be easy to find a replacement.

However, we knew the day would come when Rich would also be unavailable to continue caretaking. He is 10 or 15 years younger than my dad, so we thought we had more time, but sadly, we just got news that he has liver cancer and it has progressed to the point where he is unable to continue his caretaking responsibilities. 

This has not only left my sister and I scrambling to make decisions on the future of the Airbnb cabins, including renters scheduled to check in in the next couple of days, but on a deeper level, it has brought up many concerns about what to do in a situation like this.

You see, Rich has basically lived off grid for at least the past couple of decades that we have known him. He came to my dad as a transient, with no drivers license or car, and actually preferred camping on the property over having a physical roof over his head. Sometimes during cold winter months, he would come inside, or take up residence in the partially finished yurt on the property, but most of the time, even sometimes in the winter snow, he would find places to camp in his tent around the 25 acres. My sister thinks he’s probably on the spectrum, I imagine he’s probably had some serious trauma in his life, but the fact of the matter is that he has no family or friends. My sister and my dad had both checked in with him multiple times over the years asking if there is someone we could list as an emergency contact, or someone we should get in touch with in situations such as this. There is no one, according to him.

My dad had sort of adopted him in a sense. He would feed him, order him new shoes when his old shoes wore out, and give him rides to the store when he needed supplies, but he lived a very simple life. Since my dad‘s passing, my sister has been keeping him fed, keeping in close communication with him about the property, and has kind of filled that role of looking after him in my dad’s absence. 

Because of that, I think it was a little extra traumatic for her to arrive back home for the Fourth of July weekend to find Rich very sick and hardly able to perform his cleaning duties on the cabin. He agreed to let her take him to the emergency room, where he was told he has liver cancer, probably stage four, although we haven’t received confirmation of that that I know of, and I’m not sure if we can or will since we aren’t actually related to him. They treated him with some IV fluids, drained his stomach, and then discharged him, and my sister brought him home.

He doesn’t have health insurance, he never even wanted to give us his Social Security number for the work he was doing on the property, so that created an interesting dilemma for the two of us when we took over management after my dad passed and needed to run it more like a legitimate business rather than the off the radar/under the table arrangement my dad had with him. So here we are with this 62 year-old man who’s been caretaking our father‘s property for almost 2 decades, our dad treated him like family, he has no other friends and family to call on, no other place to go, and he’s dying. 

What would you do if you were us?

And to bring it back to how I started this post, how many other people are out in the world in similar situations, they have no one, and they’re nearing the end of their life. It just breaks my heart and it’s so sad to me, even though this was the life he chose. 

Advice, recommendations and prayers all gladly accepted! 

Also, our tentative plan at the moment is to cancel all the summer reservations, but if there’s any miraculous chance of finding a caretaker to fill this role for the remainder of the summer, we are open to ideas and recommendations in that department as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read!