Communicating with your Elderly Loved Ones
Practical Recommendations for Interacting At Home or at Eldercare Centers
by
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FOREWORD
Elizabeth was lying in her invalid’s bed, pale and unmoving. Her eyes were open and staring but she didn’t respond to her only daughter bending over her. The younger woman had been told to use smiles and nods and gentle language by her friend, a nurse in a home for the elderly; so the younger woman chatted animatedly with the virtually comatose little lady for several minutes but without result.
Then suddenly, the 83-year-old woman turned her face directly toward her daughter’s and said with great warmth: "I love you."
Elizabeth was my mother and those were the last words she spoke to me. You can imagine how I treasure that moment. Frankly, I’m not sure I could have created the climate which released my poor, senile mother for that brief second of contact if it had not been for my friend, Rita Miller.
It was Rita who had been advising me for the several years while Elizabeth had been sliding into senility and loss of vital functions.
Over dinners, during social occasions, on the phone, I would relate some new and surprising twist in my mother’s decline for which I was totally unprepared, and Rita would smile her sharing smile and offer some good practical advice for me to follow in this next phase.
It was this experience that has triggered our collaboration on this little book. This is a conversation between two old friends on a subject very close to our hearts.
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About the Book
"For everything there is a season . . . a time for every purpose under heaven.
Many of us will face a season of reversal in our lives where our parents or elderly loved one, who always cared for us, will instead need our care. Or perhaps our life or community work is with older people who need our understanding and communication skills to help them carry the burden of old age.
This short book hopes to make some heartfelt suggestions to ease that process. By practical and effective recommendations from two experienced women, one a lifelong professional in the geriatric field, the other deeply committed to her own parents’ eldercare, this information may spark creative and hopeful interaction between the caregiver and the care receiver.
It touches upon practical ideas like clarity cards, the use of stickies for memory aids, family albums, hanging plants, the importance of words of affection -- and progresses to issues of depth like forgiving the past imperfections of now aging parents, empathizing with the indignities of old age, coming to understand the ultimate kindness of senility, and sharing the burden of heartbreaking choices with those who have had to make those choices as well.
About the Author
Joanne Hughes, M.A.,
Rita Miller, R.N., began her nursing career at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, NY. After serving in Geriatric Home Care, she met the needs of the elderly patients in a highly praised retirement home in Middletown, NY, becoming Director of Nursing and Assistant Administrator. Retiring from active nursing in 1994, she is volunteering at Hospice of Orange County.