DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My grandson and his girlfriend have been living together for 11 years. They have two kids, three dogs, a cat, and are living in the second house they bought together.

I asked a lawyer friend of mine if they are in a common law marriage by now, and she told me that there is no common law marriage in our state.

My lawyer friend said they’re nuts not to go ahead and get a license because there are legal and financial benefits to being married.

After all these years why not just get married? --- NOT MARRIED

DEAR NOT MARRIED: As odd as you may find their remaining unmarried, it’s what the couple has apparently decided to do.

After more than 11 years, hopefully your grandson and his girlfriend have explored all the pros and cons ‒ legal and otherwise ‒ of being married versus being cohabitants. Since they seem as if they’re doing fine as they are, my guess is they don’t feel a need to switch things up, at least for now, and your worrying about it isn’t likely to cause them to change their minds.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: Two years ago my father had a stroke. He mostly recovered, but taking care of him was a lot for my mom. She ended up needing help herself, and now they are both in decline.

My sister and I have discussed their options with them. What we all believe will work for them at this time is to get a paid home care worker in four to six hours a day Monday-Friday and then the family can rotate through covering the rest of the time until they go to bed, and if anything comes up, an occasional overnight.

My sister and I think this is a good plan, so do our husbands and our adult children who live locally. However my sister-in-law says she and her children have no obligation to help out.

My brother died several years ago and his widow and children are still in the house where we grew up. It is less than ten minutes from my parents’ apartment. My parents sold the house to her for a fraction of its value to help her and the grandchildren out after we lost my brother. Now she and her kids have next to nothing to do with my parents. It makes me mad for so many reasons.

My mom and dad were always so good to her and the kids, especially after my bother’s death. Now their repayment for all their kindness is to be ignored and dropped when they need some help.

My sister thinks we should go directly to our nieces and nephew to see if they wouldn’t mind helping their grandparents out. They are all attending local colleges and only work parttime the last we heard. If they come into the rotation, it would mean every two weeks each of us would only have one evening, and only if necessary, an overnight, which either my sister or myself would most likely take anyway. My sister and I are planning to additionally cover alternating weekends.

Even though their mother refuses to help, do you see any reason we should not approach our brother’s children to help their grandparents out when they need it? --- NEED SOME HELP

DEAR NEED SOME HELP: You’ve undoubtedly heard the old saying that it never hurts to ask. While that may not always be perfectly true, I don’t see how you and your sister have anything to lose by approaching your nieces and nephew directly to ask them to be part of the care rotation for your parents.

The worst they can say is no, and if at least some of them are willing to work with you, they’ll have a chance to spend some precious time with their ailing grandparents.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: This will be my 18th year working at what’s become one of the last department stores in town. I have been in retail since I was a kid and I can say things have gotten so much worse in recent years and not just because of COVID.

One of the biggest problems is that there are not enough people coming to work in the retail field. Our store used to anchor a successful mall, which shut down a while back and is now under redevelopment as a medical office complex.

All the people who used to work in those long gone stores have moved on and people don’t shop the way they used to. So not only are there fewer people working at my store, but management has been given strict hiring caps. That means another holiday shopping season of working 50 or more hours a week, which gets harder and harder on me and my family.

I have also found customers are getting less patient and more rude, and not just the younger people.

While there are those who just show up and can’t wait to clock out, a lot of us who are still willing to work retail work hard and honestly want to do the best we can for our customers.

Could you please remind readers that a little bit of patience and politeness go a long way, especially when dealing with people honestly trying to do their best for them? --- DOING THE BEST WE CAN

DEAR DOING THE BEST WE CAN: As someone who once-upon-a-time worked in retail, enjoys shopping in person, and hopes malls and department stores won’t become obsolete, I’m more than glad to pass along your request for good behavior and patience on the part of customers.

It’s easy to be aggravated by having to wait in line or to hunt down available salespeople, but it’s also fairly obvious that the problems stem from, as you noted, a lack of people working in the stores, and that’s certainly not the fault of the staff members, who like you, are doing their best under difficult circumstances.