Camilla and Susan were best friends for more than 40 years, ever since their kids were in school together. Both widowed in the last decade, they grew even closer to each other. Camilla even moved into Susan’s apartment building in the Mission Terrace area of San Francisco so they could spend every day together.
When you moved out of the family home and set off on your own, your mother likely went through a mix of worry and excitement for you. Your challenges were new, and you were bound to make some mistakes on your way to figuring out adulthood. Now that she’s living alone and facing the challenges of later life, you’re likely going through your own worries, especially if you’re unable to act as a regular caregiver to support her independence.
The expansion of our senior population in the coming decades means new challenges for supporting each individual with their needs and their personal goals in later life. It also means new opportunities as these aging adults look for fitting ways to stay involved and serve their local San Francisco Bay Area communities. With a wealth of life experience and an investment in aging healthfully and vibrantly, seniors themselves may be an invaluable support system to help meet some of the challenges of the growing senior demographic.
There isn’t a single thing we do that isn’t based at least somewhat on memory. Even things that are instinctual, like eating, are tied up with how we remember; we remember what food we like to eat, how to prepare it, where the forks are, how we were taught how to hold a knife, how this tasted on that night when it was warm out and the wind rustled the leaves behind your table.
Larry was devastated when he lost his wife, Edna. He’d spent almost every day with her for 67 years, and when she was gone he felt as though he’d lost part of himself. Larry had always been a quiet man—he wasn’t one to share his feelings or speak his mind, but over the years he had learned to open up to Edna. Without her, he fell silent and felt isolated from the rest of the world.
Being a caregiver means balancing a lot of emotions and contradictions. When taking care of an older loved one, especially someone who has significant functional limitations, one of the most pressing issues is a contradiction of time.
Sometimes simple statements, filled with numbers and statistics and the flat, census-based declarations, contain within them an enormous reservoir of pain and suffering and loneliness. That’s probably why we keep them so dry and clinical: to avoid looking at the hurt. Here are a few:
If you were to ask most non-Californians where the Inland Empire was, they probably wouldn’t have an answer. It isn’t a place like Los Angeles or Napa or Silicon Valley that has mythical resonance in the ears of the country. Indeed, even most Californians, and maybe even most residents, wouldn’t be able to define exactly what Inland Empire really is.
When her grandfather gets out of bed and is unable to fall asleep for hours at night, Stella knows that he is struggling with anxiety. Sometimes his heart will race, and he’ll be preoccupied with the noises he hears outside, concerned about whether the doors are locked and the house is secure. It began shortly after his wife passed away, and it got worse with time until they addressed the issue with his doctors. Even with treatment, her grandfather still has bad days sometimes, but Stella has seen so much improvement in his symptoms. And she can tell that he feels much more confident and connected with his life as a father and grandfather.
Just about any time you purchase or make a payment on insurance, you’re spending money you hope to never get back. Auto insurance is only used in case you have an accident, which, by definition, you aren’t trying to do. Same with home insurance. Health care is the only type of insurance you pay for (for most American readers) that you use regularly, but even then, hopefully, it is only during checkups.
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