For years, I've looked back over the arc of my life & wondered at how many remarkable older people have been part of my experiences. Was I born to do the work before me, was it nurtured by contact from babyhood onward with so many epic elderly men & women modeling full-throttle aging, even as body & mind turned frail? My guess is it was a combination of both, with shadings from countless other sources.
In addition, I've been blessed to have learned from each of my clients & their families. In all but one case, had the privilege & pleasure of working as a care partner with the client & his or her family.
In that one case, the client's child could not grasp the concept of partnership. As she saw it, although her mother's estate paid me, I reported to her, so my time was hers to direct. It quickly came to feel like my task was as much, or more, to make her life easier as it was to be there for her mother.
What I bring to a care partnership - engaging, energizing, empowering - seemed less important to her than emptying & reloading the dish washer, sweeping the kitchen floor, walking the family dog & scooping his poop.
Woke up in the wee small hours, thinking about that unfortunate situation & a family I fear are riding for a fall.
Background: It was touching, seeing the daughter lovingly take on the care of her mother, who could no longer handle the long flight of steps from the driveway down to the family home she & her husband had transformed from run-down to warm & welcoming.
The move was a wrench. I mostly knew just the grounds & the first floor, and both John & I miss it! Driving down to her home, over an hour from our house & her daughter's, was a thrill; our blood would start racing as we turned off the main highway, made our way along country roads, took the left fork leading to the large property & friendly home. We both cherish memories of parties on the terrace, watching children playing in the field, gathering around a fire pit to hear our friend & her children share family tales.
If we miss it as much as we do, how much more does our older friend? She left the home she lived in all her adult life, where she raised her family, enjoyed entertaining co-workers at legendary dinners & readings in front of the cozy fire.
Chief among her blessings are her children - now in their 50s & 40s - who love her to bits & have bonded together, in spite of living on different coasts, to help ensure she gets all the TLC they can give. Instead of having her enter an excellent senior lifestyle community near her home, her oldest daughter made a place for her - ensuring her mother had no fear of losing the love of her current life, a wonderful & devoted dog.
It should be an ideal situation. It is not.
I do not know about the rest of the family, all of whom live a distance from our neck of the woods, but the daughter, from Day One, has been absolutely convinced that she & her sibs have the situation with her mother, who was recently diagnosed with dementia, totally, even brilliantly in hand. Even before her mother moved, the daughter talked about how well she & the others had planned how this would all roll out. She even mused about getting it published, so other families could benefit from their insights.
All before any care had actually been provided.
This is their first in-depth experience with an aging parent whose health in declining. In many ways, they'd gone above & beyond in preparing for the years ahead, making significant, well-thought out & executed changes to the house. The facility is well prepared & so is the family. At least on paper.
Alas, few situations are more likely to trash any well-thought out plan than dealing with an aging parent, especially one showing symptoms of dementia. But the daughter is totally convinced that she a) knows what she needs to know & b) will be fully able to roll with any punches without help from anyone.
This hit me when, having seen a copy of Atul Gawande's exceptional, Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters in the End, on the hallway table, I babbled about what a great book it was. She replied along the lines of, "Oh, it's fine for families who don't have their act together - not like us."
The Guardian opened its article about Dr. Gawande & his book with, "Have we exalted longevity over what makes life worth living? And do we infantilise the old? This is an original and moving exploration of illness and death."
How could anyone with an aging parent, let alone one living under her roof, in her care, shrug off such a heart- & eye-opener?
There are none so deaf as those who will not hear, none so blind as those who will not see.
credits:
1) Brainy Quotes
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