Elena was exhausted. Ever since her father came home from the hospital after his heart surgery, she’d been tending to his every need to ensure he recovered fully. After a few weeks of providing him with around-the-clock care, Elena and her father decided it was okay to start leaving him on his own at night.
It’s a rare and special thing to experience the change of seasons, and those of us who have lived many years and many seasons over have great wisdom to apply to these shifts. Even though our culture and economy want to keep pushing forward regardless of seasonal patterns, our bodies can’t help but feel those natural transitions. Especially in winter, our bodies want to slow down, regenerate, and store up energy for a fresh start come spring.
Sometimes aging adults need someone to step up and advocate for them because of communication barriers and other disabilities. But it’s also true that our aging community needs proactive advocates because our own culture and social constructions tend to undermine the independence and dignity they deserve and underestimate the resources they should have access to.
Cliff learned firsthand what it means to reverse expectations about aging and later life. When he moved in with his nephew’s family, they expected him to stay in the house most of the time, read books, watch TV, build puzzles, and be around to let the cat in and out. He was as surprised by their expectations as they were to hear that he planned to keep playing golf every week, meeting with his poker group, and dating women from his senior center community. He told them he’d find a way to get to all of these activities, even though he can no longer drive due to his eyesight.
Grace was worried. She’d struggled to get by financially her entire life, working in various factories and taking overnight shifts as a nanny to make ends meet. In her early 70s, she became unable to work due to her arthritis, and Grace found herself slipping below the poverty line.
My uncle, Jim, loves to work with his hands. For most of his life, he’s been an avid model builder, painter, and multi-talented craftsmen. He could sit at the kitchen table all day long, building, painting, and creating without even stopping for lunch.
A new and unfamiliar caregiver situation has the potential to be uncomfortable on all sides: for the caregiver, for your aging loved one, and for you. But what if there was a really clear picture heading into it about everything the aging adult needs, as well as the things they love to spend their time doing? When a new caregiver steps in to relieve a regular caregiver, a respite care plan allows that initial adjustment phase to be shortened, so the new caregiver and the aging adult are able to start getting to know each other in enjoyable ways immediately.
Caregivers have enormous amounts of responsibility when caring for an aging adult on a daily basis. But these responsibilities eventually boil down to two important issues: how to fill the day, and how to fill the day productively and meaningfully. Time, and the weight of it, balances with the responsibility to better the life of your charge. Whether you are a professional caregiver or a family member helping an older loved one, the issues are the same.
“It seems like a long time since we’ve had something to argue about,” said Genevieve about her and her brother and sister. “Of course, we used to argue when we were kids. But now it’s like that all over again because we can’t seem to agree on much when it comes to decisions about Dad’s care. I can tell that we’re all caught up in emotions—a lot of different emotions.”
Holidays were the hardest for her. At 87 years old, Elma, who lived independently in her own small apartment in San Francisco, spent most of her days alone—even Christmas day. When she was younger, Christmas was her favorite time of year, and her happiest memories were of huddling around the tree with her two boys and husband on Christmas morning, singing carols and opening gifts.
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