Inside Aging Parent Care

Loss and Love

By Bill September 1st, 2011

I am writing fairly brief posts because I am a bit busy caregiving. My wife Carol is recovering nicely from surgery and her son Steve will have surgery Friday. I am caregiver for both.

This story ran in Sunday’s Denver Post newspaper. It is a story about the tragedy of Alzheimer’s and the enduring magic of love. Do read it all. I would insert it here, but copyright laws prevent my doing so.

Alzheimer's

The story is one of someone slowly being robbed of her mind, and her husband’s witness to her decline. She always recognized him, and some elements of her personality stayed with her. This is similar to what happened to Frank and Audrey, Carol’s parents. Frank had significant memory loss, but his personality was intact until he died of other …

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Revisiting the Crocodile: A Caregiver Sums Up

By Carol July 12th, 2011

You never know how a death is going to take you until it happens. Even so, I think it is normal to try to prepare by looking ahead–especially during a long good-bye like my father’s.

We can find so much information on grief and mourning that researching the subject almost gets in the way. After my mother’s death I had a particularly hard time getting past what I’d learned I “should” feel to what I actually was feeling. In the early days after Dad died, I felt stunned. Encountering Death and losing Dad left me disoriented and at loose ends.

I needed structure and some way to understand my life now, post caregiving and orphaned. Three weeks after Dad died, I had this helpful dream: I walk down a hill to the edge of …

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Deep Inside Aging Parent Care One Year Later

By Carol June 28th, 2011

We were both blessed and cursed with the chance to travel with my father Frank down the long road toward the land of death. We went as far as we could with him. Then we turned back to make the return trip without him. We were changed and our lives were changed by the experience of his dying and by losing him.

In just a very few days it will be the first anniversary of Dad’s death. Last year at this time, the hospice nurses thought he had another two weeks or more remaining to him. On what turned out to be the last day of Dad’s life, Bill and I consulted with the hospice chaplain. I was trying to prepare myself for our last days together and to find the words to say …

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A Look at “Miles to Go: An Alzheimer Journal” by B.J. Smith

By Carol May 31st, 2011

It used to be a little hard for me to meet a new group of people. This has changed a lot since we started writing Inside Aging Parent Care. Now, wherever I go, I make an immediate connection with about half the people in any room of strangers when I mention that I am a caregiver blogger. Recently Bill and I joined a local Writers Meetup, and—what do you know?—at the first meeting I connected with today’s guest poster’s sister. Marianne put us in touch with B.J. Smith who has published a moving memoir of his journey as caregiver for his mother through her diagnosis, illness, and death. Here is some of B.J.’s story with links to an excerpt and to his book…

Rosemary has been gone a little more than 10 …

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Signposts on the Caregiver’s Journey

By Carol May 24th, 2011

The Caregiver’s Path to Compassionate Decision Making by Viki Kind

At the same time we were preparing to host a family meeting to begin discussing end of life issues, I was reading Viki Kind’s practical and enlightening book The Caregiver’s Path to Compassionate Decision Making. This is a book that should be on every caregiver’s shelf or, even better, in every caregiver’s handbag or briefcase. It is one of those works that will help caregivers feel just a bit less alone and quite a bit more confident of the path at some of the toughest times on the journey.

But don’t wait until the road gets rough to read it.

Take a look at Viki’s book before deciding on care arrangements or filing out living wills and other legal forms. Viki covers the pros …

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Loss and Love

Revisiting the Crocodile: A Caregiver Sums Up

Deep Inside Aging Parent Care One Year Later

A Look at “Miles to Go: An Alzheimer Journal” by B.J. Smith

Signposts on the Caregiver’s Journey

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