Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.~ Mary Oliver

Life is messy. It just is. Caring for others is often a big part of being human. Children, elderly parents and even those in between often need our attention. It can be a lonely journey. Somedays we need to be reminded that we are not alone, maybe even today.  That we should get off our knees and remember for ourselves that we are enough. This Mary Oliver Poem touches me in this way.  It reminds me that we are a part of a larger eco-system.  That our quality of life is as important as those around us! Breathe it in dear reader and join me today in letting ‘the soft animal of your body loves what it loves.’

My mom has had Alzheimer’s disease for probably the last five to seven years. It’s hard to actually know when the disease got a hold of her. There were certainly things that my mom said and did that stared me right in my face that I seemed to have ignored. Or should I say I wanted to ignore, at the time.

I should have known the signs—but since there is no prevention or cure—did it really matter? I remember one Thanksgiving my mom came to visit from Florida and brought her summer clothes. Since my mom is always cold, I should have sensed that something was wrong. Now I believe that I was in denial.

Today I am one of my mom’s caretakers. Despite living in a different state I speak to my mom on the phone daily, and when I do visit, her—which is every several month—I get to see the true effects the disease has had on my mom.

I remember 3 years ago when I took my mom into her bathroom and asked her to comb her hair, my mom picked up her toothbrush and started to brush her hair. There were signs that my brother had hung on bathrooms walls saying, “FLUSH TOILET” and “BRUSH TEETH”— that my mom only ignored. It was pretty upsetting to see my mom in this state.

My role as my mom’s caretaker is challenging, even if it is long distance. I have been able to giggle with her, sing with her and practice her spelling on the telephone on most days. I try to keep her mind stimulated and keep humor going, as laughter is great for both of us. There are days when I call my mom and I can hear immediately in her voice that she is having a tougher day. On these days, our phone calls are cut short.

Usually when I call my mom’s caregiver, who is with my mom 8 hours a day, she fills me in on how my mom is doing. Up until six months ago my mom was still able to share her words of wisdom with me. But her life with Alzheimer’s has been changing, and now as each day goes by, I seem to lose my mom a little more.

Her disappearance into her own world is starting to worsen. She has no memory, and the second I hang up the phone or visit she cannot recollect our visit

I am presently looking to place my mom in a nursing home and bring her back to her hometown, New York… I want her to be near to me so that I can visit her often and take care of her—the way she did when I was a young child.

As a caretaker for someone who has Alzheimer’s, roles seem to reverse. My mom has become the child and I the adult. I hold on to what my mom and I still share and try to stay upbeat. No she’s not the same mom, but she still fills my heart with much love and joy. I do not know how long my mom will live, or even know me. So every day I have left with her, I view as a gift.

Lisa is a popular blogger on My Mom My Hero.

Scientists have often wondered why humans live so much longer than other mammals. Even before modern medicine, human’s lives were quite long by mammalian standards. Anthropologists speculate that, during prehistory, the advantage for humans who lived long was that they were able to increase the likelihood of their younger relatives surviving by passing on useful knowledge and experience to them – teaching them how to live. Put plainly, a purpose of the aged is to teach the young. Through their achievements and their mistakes, our elders have learned valuable lessons that only experience can provide. But, sadly, much of modern society neglects to take full advantage of the knowledge our elders have.

Fortunately, there are still those who recognize that we can learn a lot from older people. The Memoir Project in Boston, Massachusetts, was founded on the idea that our elders have something important to say, and it’s our duty to listen. The project, a collaboration between the City of Boston and a writing group called Grub Street Writers, teaches seniors the basics of memoir writing:

Countless unique stories are brimming in the hearts of and minds of our elderly people. The memory project aims to capture these stories systematically by teaching seniors a practical and meaningful way to turn memories into coherent narratives with lasting value.

The Memoir Project has published several anthologies featuring the writing of ordinary seniors from all walks of life. To coincide with Valentine’s Day, the Project posted an anthology of seniors’ reflections on love, romance, and relationships called Love’s A Gamble. Here are some bits of wisdom garnered from the elders of Boston. Some recurring themes are the importance of communication, trust, compromise, and simply doing your best.

• “What we’ve noticed about the younger generation is that when something happens, it’s Splitsville. We were brought up to be able to stay together. Eventually things get better if you just hang in there. That’s all a part of learning.”- Carol and Francis Emmett
• “The secret to long lasting love is to love each other as much as you can.” – Mary Borzillo
• “Respecting each other’s pleasures is important.” – Joseph Guarino
• “Put a note in her lunchbox during the day. Turn around and say, ‘I love you.’ Spontaneous things like that are important. ” – Dorothy Papa
• “The secret to long lasting love is respect, and you need not go to bed angry. Don’t go to be mad.” – Peter Cardinale
• “Take on your responsibilities. Support your family:” – Chicky Cipriano
•  “Do everything together, listen, and compromise.” – August Gatti
•  “The secret to lasting love is compassion and understanding.” – Clifford Buri
•  “To make love last, you need communication. You need to be flexible and not demanding.” – Jose Greenwood
•  “There’s one secret to long lasting love: trusting each other.” – Rose Hughes

Another example is 73 year-old Virginia, who reflects on regret and the importance of choosing the right life-partner:

“I haven’t had an easy time of it, frankly. But maybe I can help others understand. Here’s my advice to the people looking to get married. When you get to be like me in your seventies you realize that life is too short. One of my biggest regrets is wasted opportunities and the need to see that if you’re not happy in a situation you need to change it. I could have made a major difference in my life if I had chosen my husbands carefully, really gotten to know them before committing to the relationships. Know the person in and out before you get married. You think nowadays that you can get out of it easily, but that’s not always the case.”

Obviously there are no easy answers to the big questions surrounding love and relationships, as every person and every situation is unique, but our elders, who have blazed a trail before us, can be our guides.

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If a person reaches 100 years of age, they have a lot of living to reflect on from over the years—both good and bad. And sometimes nostalgia can lead to depression when life’s changes and limitations, including energy level and companionship, are not what the person remembers and desires from days gone by. And this can be especially challenging for caretakers as they are the ones dealing with the seniors’ depression.

Well a new study, recently published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, indicates that traditional depression screening methods may actually over diagnose depression in these older adults. And the study’s authors also conclude that “many seniors’ depressive symptoms can be treated effectively through encouraging engagement.”

The 411 on the Centenarian Depression Study

The study was performed at Iowa State University where 323 people were divided into three groups:

• Individuals over 60
• Individuals over 80
• Indivduals over 100

The individuals in the over 100 group scored higher for depression according to the standard Geriatric Depression Scale, despite the older seniors saying they were in “good spirits.” Through further deduction, the researchers discovered that some of the questions were misleading. For example, Those over 100 were likely to agree with statements that describe themselves as less active or energetic, or statements that have to do with physical impairments. But many of the over 100-year-olds did not agree with questions such as, “I am not satisfied with life,” or “I do not enjoy getting up in the morning.”

Gerontology researcher Peter Martin agrees that Centenarians will make statements like, “I’m not going to live much longer” because these statements are a true observation. While statements such as these are a good indicator of depression for a 20-something, they’re completely wrong for someone nearing the end of their life. The findings? Demographics and a variance of questions need to be considered for depression testing accuracy.

What This Means for Both Patient and Caregiver Wellness

Being comfortable, familiar and being able to read your loved one or patient is crucial  to understand whether he or she is truly depressed. And if specific depression signs are there, there are positive steps to take to help the individual enjoy life again. According to Gerontology researchers, depressed centenarians need to find more meaning in their existence. “Allowing and encouraging the individual to contribute to his or her community or engaging the individual in activities he or she enjoys can do wonders for depressed seniors.” Martin adds, “Their life is not over yet. It’s the last chapter of the book, but sometimes the last chapter of the book has the most interesting stuff in it.”

Source:

http://www.alfa.org/News/2225/Study-Suggests-Changing-Depression-Indicators-for-Centenarians

Childhood seems like it takes forever. Days drag, months slowly go by—and then a year is gone. This same process goes on and on, for what seems like eternity. But when we get older, time seems to travel at a different continuum. You blink and it’s a new year. It has been over a decade since the 9-11 disaster. How is this possible? My parents and my grandparents warned me about this ‘black hole’ of time, but it’s hard to believe the concept until you experience this ‘time warp’ first-hand.

After college, for me, is when life changed. All of a sudden I wasn’t on the “school schedule” anymore and life started to meld together in the big block that encompassed juggling work and other responsibilities. Marriage, mortgage, dog, cat… And then children. This last category was the big change. All of a sudden life wasn’t about me anymore. This is when the wrinkles and gray hair started and I noticed that aging started to exponentially increase. Time and aging have trickery, I think, as life marches forward and you begin to realize your own mortality.

To Age or Not to Age? Adult Daycare and Time’s Inevitability

And then my mom announces that she’s considering an adult daycare for my grandma. This was, originally, a really odd concept to me as my experience with daycare has only involved my son. I couldn’t stop thinking about the cycle of life and how the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with its interesting concept of being old at birth and young at death, resembled a different spin on this time warp. (Sure, human cell activity is completely different when we’re young, but both stages of life require supervised care). The fact that one of my own caretakers—my grandma—now needed a caretaker was just odd to me. I realized that it’s only the middle portion of life—the part that zooms by as it’s clouded with responsibilities and exhaustion—that we are truly independent.

So my lesson: We need to enjoy the ride and take good care of our loved ones, both young and old, along the way. My grandmother has had a long, joy-filled life and continues to share her wisdom. And the four generations of my family resemble time’s strange continuum even though, scientifically, time has been constant. It’s just the different phases of life that reflect differently in terms of our own biological aging in tandem with life’s distractions. From child daycare to adult daycare, life is one crazy ride. And the similarities between the beginning and nearing the end of life are undeniable.

In honor of National Senior Independence month, let’s pay tribute to America’s senior citizens—a generation that has survived The Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam and now—The Great Recession. Enduring change and adversity are inevitable as we journey though life, and our grandparents definitely have a thing or two to teach us.

When dealing with the emotions of aging and the trials and tribulations of the golden years, people can get uncomfortable. All too often, seniors are dismissed. Ageism is, unfortunately, rampant—whether we want to believe it or not. But we have to remember that senior citizens are knowledgeable people who have lived through both the heartache and jubilation of life. And most important—they still have something to contribute to society. It’s more than respect—it’s about really taking the time to listen to our parents and grandparents, whether we want to or not.

Dementia Awareness – A Little Too Close To Home

As my 88-year old grandmother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and is being moved from her residence of 65+ years, I have to remember what she has taught me. I remember her stories about meeting my grandfather, surviving WWII and the many obstacles they faced as a young couple. My grandfather was in a bad car accident when they had two young children, and my grandmother had to teach my grandfather how to talk and walk—among other unmentionables—and all while raising two children. She had to go to work to support the family during a time when women stayed home. Through her actions, she taught her own children about love and survival. Even now, during her moments of clarity, she can give her granddaughter ‘pointers’ on raising a toddler.

My grandmother will never see her home again. She knows what is happening to her, but she also knows a thing or two about life’s disappointment and understands she’s suffering from dementia. She is enduring as best she can, despite losing her independence. So let’s respect the wisdom that comes with age and pay tribute to senior citizens. I think the President did a good job capturing the respect for seniors in one of his speeches: “Older Americans teach us the timeless lessons of courage, sacrifice and love. By sharing their wisdom and experience, they serve as role models for future generations. Let’s pay tribute to our senior citizens and their contributions to our nation.”

With Valentines Day around the corner, I am dedicating this post to one of the great love stories of the past decade. The Notebook brings up some great points about dealing with dementia, aging and the beauty of caregiving for a loved one.

The ‘older’ Noah, played by James Garner, does a fabulous job of unwinding his love story for his wife, Allie, played by Gena Rowlands, who suffers from Alzheimers and is in assisted living. With his big heart, compassion and patience to reach his sweetheart, Noah is able to help Allie remember the past. Allie’s eldercare doctors keep telling him that Allie’s condition is irreversible, and that certain memories and visions are lost forever. But, as viewers witness in the film, Allie is able to recollect memories of the past, including certain piano tunes, despite what the cargivers think.

Noah’s unconditional love provides the healthy companionship and support that Allie needs as she battles her disease.

Trailer provided by Video Detective

Did you hear Meryl Streep is up for an Academy Award for her recent portrayal as Margeret Thatcher in the The Iron Lady? This is a biographical British film about Margaret Thatcher, longest serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of the 20th century. British director Phyllida Lloyd chose to focus on the long-reigning former British prime minister’s slow decline into dementia.

The Iron Lady: Tells the story of a woman who smashed through the barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male-dominated world. The story concerns power and the price that is paid for power, and is a surprising and insightful portrait of an extraordinary and complex woman.  Watch the Trailer here :   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im2UvBs_gfs