Inside Aging Parent Care

Trying to Take Care of The Elderly Without Really Knowing How

By Carol April 11th, 2010

I’ve been reading novelist Sue Miller’s memoir of her father’s decline and death (The Story of My Father: A Memoir,Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). After her mother’s sudden death, she and her father saw a lot of each other. She writes of a dawning realization that something odd is going on with him. He is different: sadder, untidy, forgetful.

She knows something is wrong. But what? He is not responsive to her questions about his health and wellbeing. Is it because he can’t talk to her or is it because he won’t? Is he too proud or simply confused?

I am completely familiar with that feeling of bafflement. Can’t he or won’t he? We often ask ourselves this question about Frank. Why doesn’t he shave every day as he used to do? Why doesn’t he clip …

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A Long Distance Caregiver No More

By Carol April 9th, 2010

Bill and I expected that there would be a period of adjustment for my Dad upon his move to Denver. For one thing, we understood that the change in altitude from near sea level to mile-high would stress his system. As a man with heart problems and mild COPD, I was sure his adjustment would be difficult. I remembered my move from Green Bay to Colorado in 1974 and the long afternoon naps that became a necessity for several weeks. A man of his age, I knew, would need even more time to acclimate.

Another factor that we did not anticipate was his decision to give up his habitual afternoon cocktail hour and, indeed, the consumption of any alcoholic beverages at all. Since a drink or five had been his daily habit for more …

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My Elderly Father’s Change of Heart

By Carol April 6th, 2010

For many of us, it begins with a phone call. In our case, the call came from my 89 year old father late in the spring of 2008. He had been released from Waterman Hospital after his third bout with pneumonia a few weeks earlier. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “why am I here when you are there?”

We had often encouraged Dad to consider moving from his home at an assisted living facility in Central Florida to join us in Denver where Bill and I have lived for the past twenty years. Up until now he had always resisted the idea. “I’ll never leave Florida,” he would say with conviction.

His sudden change of heart pleased me at the same time that it scared me. Long distance caregiving made it hard to sort …

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