When fannie smith, 82, was found to have lung cancer two years ago, her son Ray had nightmarish visions of commuting weekly between his home in Denver and his mother's place in Linden, N.J. "Mom wasn't going to move, and she didn't want to go to a nursing home," the 59-year-old financial adviser recalls. But all kinds of problems, from fixing the hot-water heater to lining up 24-hour health care for her, suddenly became his responsibility. "How do you handle all that from 1,800 miles away?" he wondered. "You just can't do it by yourself."
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