Could an Elder Care Mediator Help Your Family?

When I told a friend that I am interested in the field of elder care mediation, she responded, "I may need the help of a mediator in about fifteen years."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't want the same thing to happen to my siblings that happened to my mom's siblings."

"What happened?"

"My mom has one brother and one sister. When their mom, my grandmother, died, she left the house to my mom's sister. My mom's brother was furious. The three of them tried to work through it, but they couldn't. For the last fifteen years, there have been no family parties, no family reunions, no family gatherings. I haven't seen my aunt or uncle or their families since my grandma's funeral."

She then told me that she is the oldest child in her family, and she has 7 siblings. She's determined that when her parents die, it won't be the end of the good relationships that they share. As executor, she'll call in a mediator, if necessary, to help them work through the difficult issues that frequently arise once parents are gone and assets need to be divided.

NPR recently broadcast a story called "Mediators Help Families With Tough Choices of Aging." If you want to learn how a mediator may be able to help your family grapple with tough inheritance, estate planning and elder care issues, you may want to read it.

A Memorable Monday

Last Monday night was one of the most memorable of the entire year. My three teenage daughters and I loaded my 8-foot-long whiteboard, adjustable stool, reflector, tripod, camera, and light meter into the Expedition and headed one hour north. Our mission: to take pictures of Marian and her family.

Marian is a Native American. She was 63-years-old when she started working for us. I was 7 months pregnant with twins at the time, and she came each weekday afternoon to care for my four children ages 2, 4, 6, and 8 while I rested. When the twins arrived, she was the first person outside of family to welcome them. She was jubilant that day in my hospital room. During the next year and a half, she came each week day to help me with my busy brood. I will be forever grateful for her help.

My twins are nearly 16 now. Can Marian really be 78-years-old? She doesn't look it. Yet life has not been easy for her. Her daughter, the recipient of a heart transplant a decade earlier, died unexpectedly a few years ago. Her husband, Ray, is struggling with terminal cancer.* Yet in spite of life's challenges, she has not lost her zest for life. She just keeps going. Marian is one of my heroes.

*Ray passed away on August 4, 2009.

Finding a Purpose in Life

Ed Kashi. Julie Winokur. Perhaps you know these names. I didn’t. Not until yesterday, when I viewed MSNBC's multimedia masterpiece, Aging in America, for the first time. Kashi is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in Time, National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine. Winokur is a reporter. Their collaboration, along with a team of talented producers and directors, produced a captivating picture of “The New World of Growing Older.”

Their message is simple. When older adults stay engaged, when they find purpose in their later years, they thrive. This theme is echoed in a recent article in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Neuropsychologist Patricia Boyle and professor Gary Kennedy studied 1,238 older adults. They discovered that when these adults no longer found purpose in their lives, their health declined. When they felt their lives had purpose, however, they lived longer, even if chronic medical conditions and some level of disability made life more difficult.

MSNBC's Aging in America demonstrates the important role purpose plays in the lives of its everyday heroes. Heroes like 89-year-old Walter Burnette, who only spent 30 days in retirement before returning to his job as a heavy equipment operator in a West Virginia quarry. Heroes like Cari Secord, a “Care-A-Vanner” who traveled all over the country in her RV and built homes for Habitat for Humanity. She, along with other like-minded retirees, sold her home and found purpose in building homes for others. Heroes like retired doctor Henry Friedman, who returned to the practice of medicine, this time serving the poor of South Florida out of a MediVan, a mobile clinic.

I hope you’ll take time to watch MSNBC's Aging in America. (Google MSNBC's Aging in America to view.) Then POST A COMMENT below about an inspiring older adult you know who has found a sense of purpose in his or her twilight years.

Calm in Your Heart

Peace.
It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. (Unknown)

"We Forget that We Don't Remember"

If you know or care about someone with Alzheimer's disease, you must read Alan Dienstag's article "Forgetting That We Don't Remember*." This article is a gem. Share it with anyone who has the slightest interest in making life better for someone in the early stage of Alzheimer's. (See below.)

Alan Dienstag is a psychologist, and he has intimate knowledge of the cruel nature of Alzheimer's disease. Since 1995, he has offered support groups to individuals suffering from Alzheimer's. In 1996, he was approached by the director of the local Alzheimer's Association chapter. She suggested that he talk to Don DeLillo, a writer of great reputation, who was interested in offering writing as therapy for patients in the early stages of the disease. Dienstag was skeptical, but he agreed to talk to him.

DeLillo was convinced that writing as therapy could make a difference; Dienstag remained unconvinced. But one phrase that DeLillo had shared continued to reverberate in Dienstag's mind: "Writing is a form of memory." Perhaps Dienstag had concentrated for too long on their memory loss, instead of on the memory they still had. Uncertain of the outcome, yet intrigued by the idea, he agreed to collaborate with DeLillo.

They recruited six people from two support groups in New York City, and the Lifelines Writing Group was born. The group's first writing assignment was "I remember. . ." Dienstag writes, "From the outset, I was surprised at the directness and poignancy of the work produced by the group." For instance, 73-year-old Elizabeth wrote: "I remember when I was a little girl sitting under a tree during the eclipse. It got dark and the birds went to bed. . . . I can remember picking a fig from a tree in Athens. My lover watched me in delight."

Dienstag suggests that "People in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease are in danger of forgetting that they can still remember, as are those of us who work with people with Alzheimer's. . . .We should surround people who are forgetting with acts of remembering."

The group met continuously for two years. Participants enjoyed the experience, and were pleased to be part of the group. Occasionally, they had difficulty writing, and Dienstag or DeLillo would have them dictate their words to them. At the end of two years, however, the group had to disband because the members' declining mental and physical abilities left them unable to participate. The last time they met, Dienstag and DeLillo presented the group members with bound copies of their stories with their names on the cover. They smiled, laughed, and cried as they perused the pages of their precious stories.

Perhaps we can learn something from their experiment. It wouldn't take a renowned author and a noted psychologist to encourage a person struggling in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease to write his or her stories. Perhaps we should coax these stories from them, and we will all be enriched in the process.


Here's the link to *"Lessons from the Lifelines Writing Group for People in the Early Stages of Alzheimer's Disease: Forgetting That We Don't Remember" by Alan Dienstag.