A film by Julie Winokur | Photographs by Ed Kashi

EDITOR'S NOTE: Julie Winokur and Ed Kashi's The Sandwich Generation is an honest look at the difficult decision of having your elderly parent move in with your family. This work documents Julie's commitment to her father as well as the strain it can have on her own family. It's not always pretty, but it's honest and loving and a true definition of what family is.

83-year-old Herb Winokur moved in with his daughter, Julie Winokur, and her family in March 2006. Herb suffers from dementia. Filmmaker Julie Winokur and her husband, photojournalist Ed Kashi, were faced with difficult choices and overwhelming responsibility as members of the Sandwich Generation: people who are caught between aging parents and young children. With one out of every four Americans caring for an older relative, the ranks of the Sandwich Generation are growing rapidly.

The resulting film, The Sandwich Generation, is an emotionally charged account of family caregiving, where Winokur and Kashi expose their personal lives with unflinching candor. They uprooted their two children and their business in order to move 3,000 miles cross-country to care for Herb.

During a family visit to his Fire Island beach house, Herb Winokur pays a visit to one of his old haunts, Wes Little's Seaview Market. Accompanied by his daughter, Julie, and granddaughter, Isabel, Herb benefits from the connectedness of three generations.

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Julie's father cringes—in jest—at the idea of wearing the purple sweater that his daughter has chosen for him to wear. Herb loved humor and never missed an opportunity to turn something into a joke.

Julie prepares Herb's pills for the week in her kitchen.

Isabel Kashi with her grandfather and mother, Julie Winokur, in their kitchen in Montclair, N.J.

Julie Winokur keeps her father, Herb, company at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J. Herb was admitted overnight due to his confusion from a recent fall.

link to Julie's Talking Eyes Media site for an excellent resource page on dementia

The Sandwich Generation

Millions of middle-aged Americans are caring for their children as well as their aging parents. When filmmaker-photographer pair Julie Winokur and Ed Kashi took in Winokur's 83-year-old father, they decided to document their own story. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/publication/the-sandwich-generation