Whenever Mrs. Evelyn Rindner comes home she turns on the news. It’s not because she’s interested — for the most part she doesn’t even stay in the room — but because she needs some background noise in her apartment.

“You know it’s just very quiet” says Mrs. Rindner seventy-six. “I always had people — the children my husband. And now I come into the house and it’s silent.”

That silence is just a small manifestation of the loneliness Mrs. Rindner must deal with fifty-three years into her marriage. She’s still living independently at home just outside Brighton Beach in Brooklyn New York. Her husband Charles however is ten minutes away at a nursing facility where he has been for the past three years.

“I’d love to have him at home but it would be impossible” Mrs. Rindner said. “We had no other choice.”

The Rindners are one of many elderly couples who no longer live together in the same location. This happens when one spouse has age-related cognitive or physical impairments and can no longer be cared for at home. The impaired spouse is placed elsewhere usually in a long-term care facility. For all intents and purposes long-term means permanent and the expectation is that the patient will live out the rest of his or her life there.

Even though there are no official numbers geriatric caregivers experts and administrators at long-term care facilities say anecdotal evidence indicates that such cases are becoming more common. And if the aging worldwide population is any indicator this heartbreaking trend will only continue to increase.

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