Mission Outreach to Aging Adults & Families

IMG_0744.JPGPart 2/4 in a series about how churches develop mission outreach to aging family and elder church members

As Jesus’ hands in the world, guided by the Holy Spirit to demonstrate His love through our actions, church mission must include seeking out those who are isolated due to age or health and support and encourage their families.

gusJohn 4:35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.”

Churches need to recognize the need to reach out to children of aging parents in a multidimensional ways. What services they can be offered to adult children and spouses caring for loved ones? Perhaps Parentcare support groups, Bible study with respite care, regular adult day care, and at the very least, some form of regular and frequent home visitation for the older church member, to provide companionship and spiritual care. If we come to see Elder care as a mission and ministry, we will deliberately and actively seeking out isolated older members and the people who care for them. In isolation, our Elders suffer. We (the focus of the church as a whole) are neglecting the spiritual care of older adults and their adult children.

In preceding years, churches grew from the younger ages on up. Young families were embraced, children grew up learning about Saving Grace, play groups formed, families met in fellowship and worship and community was built. 25 years ago, that was what drew me in the doors. As the mother of two preschool aged children, I became hungry for a foundational faith we could grow as a family. I was initially attracted to the church because mothers in my La Leche League group were members. I found a wellspring of children’s activities, and became immersed in the church/child/parenting culture. It was vibrant and fun and alive, full of music and song.

My current church home is a rapidly aging congregation who span 50-101 years across a few dozen members. Most no longer participate in outreach activities. There is little engagement between this church body and adult children, our youth are a small handful of great-grandchildren of longtime members.

Previously, I shared the story of Mae and the encounter I had with her son. We have 4 such “Maes” in the last year. Physical decline, cognitive impairment or some other combination kept them from worship and activities. Their adult children don’t engage with the church much, perhaps because no one is left for them to connect with, perhaps because they feel overwhelmed trying to get Mom to church and, perhaps, because no one is reaching out to them. This would explain Mae’s son’s anger toward the congregation he grew up in.

Allow me to unpack that just a bit:

First, these activities need to fall to someone other than the Pastor. Pastors already have a full-time calling, and what I propose requires a called and gently trained team for this mission outreach, not unlike Stephen’s Ministries of recent years.

Small group outreach: Eldercare Advocates can be trained to run small groups for spouses or adult children caring for parents. A ministry opportunity exists people come together to share stories, build support networks, learn about local resources from each other and receive spiritual care. By understanding the needs of these families and their challenges in co-generational care, an environment can be developed to support study and worship participation for all generations.

Respite care: Developing a respite care program -perhaps a lunchtime activity – on a regular basis allows time for self care for other family members.  Through regular, scheduled activities trusting relationships are built.

Home visitation More than monthly prayer and sacraments, we can bring time, companionship and respite to the home. Loneliness experienced by homebound or institutionalized Elders causes suffering, which none but family and care providers hear. Home visitation, especially when coordinated with the family offer respite and time for Spiritual care as well.

My calling is to help churches and families find creative ways to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population of Elders. They way we have cared for the aged and fragile in the past will no longer be sustainable. We need a new model that begins in the family, in the community and addresses not only the physical, but the spiritual needs of Elders and their families.  Time is of the essence.

Church Congregations and Aging Adults

Part 1 of 4:  The Invisible Aging Person

The church needs renewed consideration of the Eldest members. People too often become invisible once they are no longer able to get out, when they are too fragile to “contribute” to the growth or life of the church. I have witnessed a sad trend played out in congregations I have participated in and the work I have done with Elders both in the community and in Assisted Living Facilities.  Once a person becomes absent – through relocation to an institution, becoming home bound due to infirmity or because the church is not set up to accommodate special needs –  they become invisible.  Deacons may send a card on special days.  A church visitor may pop in for an hour once a month, but the Older member becomes exiled, wandering alone in the spiritual desert of their last years.

I belong to a small, aging congregation in a rural community. There has been discussion of late that if we don’t bring in younger families, the church may not have sufficient members to keep the doors open.  That’s a reality shared by many small churches, and the focus of revitalization strategies taught by leaders like Thom Rainer and Ken Priddy. It makes sense: We must find ways to invite people to come in – and stay – to keep the church alive.  The Great Commission calls us to make disciples and certainly we can’t do that if the doors are closed.

Historically, churches grew from the younger demographic upwards, not unlike societal institutions. Historically speaking (pre Baby Boomer cohort) the majority of our population were in their middle years, with a large base of youth and children at the base of the population pyramid, and retirees and Elders comprising the narrowing tip. Nursery care, preschool programs and Vacation Bible School drew families by attracting  children and their parents. That was an effective paradigm for growth as the Boomer Generation was created, well into the 90’s as they then had their own children. (This format worked for me. I was “unchurched” until a program drew my children in and then I followed. Nothing softens the heart of a parent more thoroughly than seeing their children glowing with joy and a sense of purpose; the innocence of “letting their light shine”).

The times, though, they are a’changing. The Boomers will be launching the last of their babies shortly.  The Generations X and Y and the Millennials will not likely reproduce in the numbers that the Boomers and their parents did. Church nurseries, I predict, will not host the numbers that were common 30 years ago.

I will close this installment with a story I was privy to. I began reflecting on this situation as our church discusses revitalization efforts and how we become more welcoming. It occurred to me to think through “to whom do we need to be welcoming?”  We need to not overlook our aged church members, who once disconnected from their Spiritual fellowship, can suffer in isolation.

Mae was a resident at an assisted living where I was employed as a nurse. She was in her early 80’s, and suffered short term memory loss.  Mae had been moved to the assisted living apartment because she could no longer safely care for herself at home, and her family thought the socialization of the community living facility would benefit her. Mae had a church visitor – once a month a young gentleman would “round” on about a half dozen residents who had once been church members. As far as I could see, that was her only church contact.  In chatting with her eldest child one day, I heard an intense anger towards the church and it’s members, as he felt that for the 40 years Mae had participated in all aspects of the life of her church, no one “saw” her anymore.  She had become invisible to the church family, save the dedicated volunteer who provided ministry in the local facilities for “former” church members. Mae was starving for conversation, for regular prayer, Bible Study, a friend, and the ritual of church services.  In the assisted living, she was spiritually starving. Her children also felt abandoned by the church family they had grown up with, and thought would continue to be a resource for them and their mother as her needs changed.

Our seniors become “the forgotten” and often decline visits because “they don’t want to be a bother”.  I’ll let you in on a secret.  They DO want to be a bother.  They want to be seen, noticed, cared about, included, even in their changing states.  They thirst for authentic connection, visits, prayer, hymns, gossip.

Questions to consider:

How many of your aged church members seem to have become invisible once they no longer attended services regularly? 

Is anyone designated in your church to notice an absence and follow up with a call to the parishioner or their family? 

Who in your church family is tasked with making sure members, unable to get out often, are visited frequently enough to nurture still growing relationships, rituals and spiritual succor?

* * * * * * *

I challenge church leaders to take an inventory of the people that have faded from view in the last year.

Where have they gone?

Who has reached out to them?

What training is offered for your volunteer visitors, if you have such a body, so that they are equipped to have meaningful visits to those who are home bound?

Does your church regularly engage with the families of their aging membership?

The Changing Image of Aging

GrannyContemplating issues facing the aging population on our planet (and therefore, facing us all) I became aware of the lack of positive role models for active aging and co-generational caring in families. In the US, where people over 60 are more than 30% of the population, only 2% of movie and television roles portray older adults, and then often in cameo/comedic roles.. What does this lack of role modeling mean for us? That we don’t have a strong cultural idea – coming out of the “nuclear family” post WWII era – regarding the needs of our Elders for meaningful relationships with younger adults and conversely, the need for all of us to “mind our elders.” Culturally, we lack a map for what healthy, positive co-generational sharing should look like, and how to live it out.

I cut my cultural teeth on the sitcoms of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. I remember when American television broke the color barrier and when women quit vacuuming in high heels and pearls (Thanks be to God!). Seniors, however, continue to remain quite invisible.  Where is the show about life in the Assisted Living or retirement living that includes bicycling miles for an ice cream treat? British and Canadian television have done better integrating multiple generations in their storylines –  from “Doctor Who” to 81 year old Dame Judi Dench (who continues to model of an active and vibrant “granddame”), as Jean Pargetter-Hardcastle in the multi-generational family sitcom “As Time Goes By”. “Downton Abbey” gave us a 4-generation family (albeit cared for by paid staff), and the excellent aging (and maturing) of family members across a decade. Some other favorites portraying the retirement cohort would be “The Last of the Summer Wine” and “The Vicar of Dibley” which include positive, humorous and touching portrayals of people from different generations supporting and encouraging each other (sometimes into trouble). They are people we can relate to and imagine being in relationship with. (They also die – and their friends mourn).

Twenty years ago, the battle cry for assisting the most vulnerable in our communities was “It takes a village to raise a child.”  Then, as now, we hear little about how the needs of elders in our society will be addressed beyond the hot button topic of Medicare and Social Security “reform.” There are problems there that will need to be addressed creatively as the Boomers hit those roles. More pressing, and in the grasp of each of us right now is: How do we support the Elder community from the ground up?  When is the spotlight going to fall on Elders – not as dottering, cameo appearance comediennes or crazy/scary and unpredictable  – but addressing the need for accessible spiritual care and nurture, medical care, socialization, generational sharing and protection from those who would abuse or exploit?

The Art of Parentcare LLC will be offering training in 2016 for individuals, churches and other community groups to develop additional skills in assessing and creatively supporting the spiritual, physical and emotional care of aging adults and their families, and to aid in anticipating and meeting the changes that will come as the wave of Boomers hits the shore of their seventh decade and beyond. Private and group consulting services are also available.

Holiday Specials on Coaching & Classes through 1/3/25!

Thank you for your interest in coaching, consulting or nurse care coordination services with Art of Parentcare, LLC. All service packages include on-going support via text during the service period in addition to telephonic, virtual or in person meetings. Written summaries with action steps are sent after each session.

Packages can be scheduled via https://calendly.com/artofparentcare. A 25% deposit is requested at time of scheduling and can be made through Venmo@katherine-silver-8. Payment plans are available with pre-arrangement.

Coaching/Consulting Services:
HOLIDAY SPECIAL: This consultation is FREE through January 3, 2025.
Navigating Elder Care: Family Solutions: We will schedule 30 minutes to discuss planning for changing future needs or address more pressing needs/strengths; how to prioritize the urgent, client rights, and roles and responsibilities. Value: $75

HOLIDAY SPECIAL: for clients who sign up by January 3, 2025, this $150 dollar package is available for $99.
Focused Coaching/ Individual Session: Does everything feel mostly under control, but there is this one thing you just can’t navigate or that wakes you up at night? This option is for you! We will explore solutions to this unique situation. Includes 1-hour initial consultation and a scheduled 30-minute follow-up call within 2 weeks. Written summary of conversation and action steps will follow each visit. Value: $150.00

HOLIDAY SPECIAL: for the first 10 clients who sign up by January 3, 2025, this $450 dollar package is available for $349.
Sustained Support Coaching: 4 hour-long meetings conducted weekly or bi-weekly as you prefer. We begin with prioritizing concerns and goals. Together we will create strategic plans to support transitions in care or change in condition, address immediate client needs, assist in identifying personal and social service resources, and provide debrief support following any urgent situation or change in client condition. This package may be renewed indefinitely. Value: $450.00

Upcoming Classes:
HOLIDAY SPECIAL: 10% discount for the first 10 clients who enroll in any class offering by January 3, 2025.
Plan Ahead: Journey into Aging: an 8-week course covering the language of aging (how to speak knowledgeably to providers), expected benchmarks that indicate slow change of condition, how to create back up plans so the unexpected change does not lead to crisis response, exploring care options before you need them. The goal of this course is to arm participants with knowledge to understand and identify resources and choices before (if) they are needed. $250 for the 8-week series. Next online class begins January 9th, 2025, 7-8 pm PST.
Navigating the End-of-Life Journey: an 8-week course covering the language of aging (how to speak knowledgeably to providers), expected changes in functional capacity and Palliative Performance Scale to help you identify where you are on the journey; what hospice is and isn’t, when to engage with hospice care and what questions to ask, exploring care options before you need them. The goals of this course are to teach participants about milestones typical to the end-of-life experience, anticipate needs for changing levels of care, identify resources and choices in advance, tackle business and legal issues pre-emptively. $275 for the 8-week series, guidebook “The Final Quest” included in cost of the class. The upcoming online class begins January 7th, 2025, 7-8 pm PST.
Eldercare Advocacy Training: a 4-hour class for family or community members interested in learning about Eldercare concerns, understanding local resources and helping Elders navigate care choices. $125, online with in person option available. Next class date TBA.

RN Care Coordination Service Package:
Care coordination services are currently limited to Oregon residents due to RN licensure requirements.
Care coordination across the health care continuum is crucial to the success of an individual’s health care goals and outcomes. Art of Parentcare, LLC., contracted care coordination services are provided by RNs skilled in medical, physical and home safety assessment, care planning and coordination of care between clients, providers, community resources and payors. Care coordinators strive to improve adherence to the treatment plan, identify barriers to care and resource needs, safety concerns, recognize changes in condition earlier, reduce hospital re-admissions and improve client satisfaction. These outcomes are achieved through regular monitoring visits and telephonic check-in with the client, client and family health education and medication review, and advocating for client needs with their provider and when applicable, payor source.
Care Coordination services are privately contracted and paid but may be reimbursed by your healthcare coverage. It is the client’s responsibility to determine any payor reimbursement. Care Coordination visits are conducted in person when feasible, through virtual meeting platforms when travel is prohibitive due to distance or travel conditions.
The basis of a care coordination service plan is the comprehensive assessment. In this meeting, we will review recent and on-going medical history, medication review, cognitive and functional assessments. In collaboration with the client and their family, this information will guide the development of care plan goals and interventions (what action steps are needed, and who will perform them). Some actions will be performed by the RN, others will be assigned to the client or their representative.
The BASIC package includes a comprehensive in-person or virtual assessment and one follow up meeting to review the documentation, medication review, suggested care plan goals and action steps within a week of the initial appointment. Value: $495.00.
The PREMIUM package includes assessment, documentation, collaborative care plan and 6 scheduled in-house or telephonic follow up visits within 3 months. *Note: RN care coordinators can only discuss the client’s protected health information with those for whom there is a Release of Information on file, signed by either the client or guardian. Value: $1395.00

Allowing Natural Death

5 and a half years ago, I lost my mother to a very normal death.  She was 88.  She had been a 1/2 pack a day smoker for 5 decades. One chronic condition – a low platelet count – had dogged her for 40 years, with no ill effects until the last couple years of her life, when periodically she would become “a quart low” and we’d traipse to the ER for a transfusion and diuresis which would make everything better for several months.  In going through old emails this morning, I found a letter I wrote to friends of mine during my mother’s last week as I struggled with bearing witness to her end of life transition.  It is raw, but I think in that, shares well what normal end of life decline is like for both a loving daughter and her mother.  I share it today, after spending some time listening to and reading from David Kessler’s works – knowing that we have little that prepares us for what a normal, uncomplicated end of life process looks like.  In a webinar of his, he shares the story of a person telling of the death of a family member, how horrible it was for them.  Kessler comments that it was actually quite a normal process they witnessed.  I share with you today what “normal” can look like, and the confusion and uncertainty it brings us.

Death is not easy when we have access to technology and drugs that can indefinitely prolong arrival at it’s door.  In the end, however, it is where we will all arrive.

Thanks, dear readers, for bearing with these musings as we approach the autumn of the year.  May there be peace or comfort in my words – now or later, whenever you need them.

Katherine

     IMG_4068.JPGGood morning, my dear friends.  I’m writing to you because I’ve been holding a “group conversation” in my head this morning, and realized I really could open it up to you all for us to muck around in a bit, grow and think and philosophize, if you have the energy.  It is about the process I am working through with my mom’s end of life.  That being said, if you aren’t up to the topic, it’s ok to stop reading here.  (you have been warned).   I find that I need my “sisters” for a reality check and I needed to journal and talk and do that better when I can imagine you responding and offering the wisdom you have acquired in your collective years.  We will  all have to walk through this place, let us see what we can glean from each other for tools to help us on our way.

     I, who always thought myself a midwife “one who ushers souls both in and out” is finding I am unexpectedly ill-prepared for the changes happening with my mother.  I realized this morning that I don’t have a vocabulary for it, this process of un-change that is occurring.  Indeed, it seems where I once thought death the “flip side” of birth, I am now thinking it is the “un” side.  Having framed most of my adult experiences and passages in terms of labor, delivery, birth and postpartum, I am at a loss, now that I cannot do so.  This is so much bigger and more fragmented than birthing, which now seems so predictable and linear.  We have documentable steps in the birth process, though few women follow the text book design, we know generally what markers to look for to alert us to an acceleration of the process or dystocia.  In the end, we know there will be an out-come, an arrival. In 90+% of those births, there will be great joy and celebration, in others, guilt and sadness.

     But what of death?  What of the process of dying?  It is decidedly not linear, except in that we know it is our ultimate destination, having been born.  I am struggling this morning with language and process.  Death has no “out-come”; but no “in-go” either, except in the turning inward that those around the dying one revert to for solace and silence.  I realized this morning that all my encounters with death intimate to me have been unexpected and dramatic (traumatic).  The onset of death was sudden with no time to watch, to bear witness to the slow defragmentation that dying seems to be.  I have no predictors, no milestones upon this journey that let me know where we are on the map — closer to town, lost in the woods, stuck in mire?  Perhaps it doesn’t matter where we are, we are there anyway, and we know it.  

     I feel ill-equipped to help my family (children, spouse, siblings, aunts and uncles) for lack of knowing.  I know that we (my mother and I/us) are progressing away from something — her health and her vitality, her physical ability, her quick and witty responses to humor or her acerbic response to the news or politics.  The fire of her argumentative nature is dowsed, her independence and will to decide important things for herself, put away in a chest probably not to be fully opened again.  (She does draw this mantle out periodically, when it seems least likely she will, and then I stand with my mouth agape and wondering how I erred as she, with energetic resolve, lets the social worker or caregiver know that I have made the wrong assumption or decision about her care).  Lack of predictable response on my mother’s part is a large measure of what keeps me off-balance in this precarious walk.  She wants me to make important decisions about her treatment (though on hospice in all other respects, we are still making the final — and it will no doubt be final — decision about whether to treat her mortally low platelets anymore, and she asks me to make that decision for her, stating it is too big for her to make).  I don’t want to be the “parent” in this conversation….I want to be the daughter passively along for the ride, not the driver deciding which road we take through these uncharted lands.

     I have no language of death or the slow defragmentation that I am seeing now, where the loss of strength and increase of pain have no etiology, no treatment, no diagnosis — only the persistent question “if we do invasive diagnostic procedures, and we find something (MS, ovarian cancer, gallstones, kidney stones, etc), what would we do with that information besides continue to keep your mother comfortable?”  My mother is a frail, 88 (on Thursday) year old woman who smoked for 5 decades and has had uncontrolled (though mildly so) diabetes for who knows how long, and now possibly some undiagnosed neuromuscular syndrome as well…indeed what would we do? My reliance on the physicians to guide us through this has proven unsteady.  Because we cannot know the hour, estimate the process of dying as we would the process of birthing, we cannot anticipate, no one will tell us “your mother, as you can see, is dying, and we cannot with good conscience, prolong her process (especially since all of her advance directives direct us not to)”.  I guess I know that.   

     How, then,  do I answer her question “why can’t I walk?”  because “I don’t know, Mom” has lost it’s ring and “because your body is winding down and preparing to cease” is too brutally honest.  Or “why do I have such pain?”  “We don’t know, Mom…”  I am filled with unknowing, and understand the reluctance of MD’s to put her through testing trying to find an answer when the outcome seems unlikely to change, and yet we fill her with morphine (because the vicodin derivatives are now ineffective against her lower right quadrant pain), without knowing WHY she hurts in the first place (we have done CT and xrays to no avail).  I have watched her strength decline in the last 6 weeks from able to walk with her wheeled walker with some confidence to unable to lift her foot to cross her legs while reclining in her chair, she is no longer weight bearing, and cannot move her feet to straighten herself when we transfer her from bed to wheelchair. How do we process losses, failings of systems, without knowing WHY?  I am stuck here.

     When a birth process fails, we work diligently to uncover a least a fair hypothesis of “why”.  When an aged body fails, is the why we need to be satisfied with simply the answer “age”?  Is this what it looks like when someone “winds down”, this slow defragmentation of the body and it’s systems, one slow failure at a time until there isn’t enough of the whole left working to keep the system running?  My spaces between breathing in and breathing out seem to be getting longer, as I hold my breath wondering if today is the day she lets go, or I panic wondering if today is the first day of the next 6 years of this pattern, fearing that she may plateau where she is – fragile, angry, unable to care for herself, demanding and pleading that we care for her our selves instead of the dedicated caregivers we have found for her.  And then the guilt that should be optional but somehow isn’t, washes over me for fearing such a thing (though were it me stuck in my body thus, it would be a fearful thing indeed — I’d prefer not to live too long like that). She is my mother after all, how can I anticipate with some relief her passing?  Bad daughter? Good nurse?  Compassionate human?

     My goals in my work are to promote dignity and comfort in aging and dying, and yet my own mother seems far less interested in dignity and comfort than in demanding we find a way to make her well.  Are we to be forever stuck in the emotional stage of denial?  The hospice chaplain is visiting her today, it is my fondest desire that he help her find a way to calm herself and accept the un-doing of a body once so full of spitfire and hutzpah.

     There is no one to blame for the decline, she is 88 and never had aspirations (that she shared) to live an extraordinarily long life just to say she kept breathing that long.  And, 88 is not a short life, and hers as full as it was of love and children and work and adventures…I mean really, I’m not sure I’d have it in me to pack up my 9 year old and move to Taiwan for 2 years (OK, I no longer have a 9 year old, mute point).  She has told her stories and we have memorized them; we have shared love back and forth and around and under, with no regrets.  Now, we just wait, expectantly, frustrated as the body she relied on slowly grinds to a stop while she still inhabits it?  

     Where do we go from here?  How to help one’s mother cross over, without feeling an accomplice to Death?  In theory I always thought it would be easy to balance this, to make it right.  In practice, I am lost at sea……(though the seas are calm at the moment, I am not flailing, but contemplating).  

Your loving friend and sister on this twist in the journey,

Katherine

 

After a long hiatus…

It’s been 18 months almost to the day since my last post.  In that time, I relocated back to Oregon, married a man who is daily my Heart’s Delight and has made me, officially, a “Pastor’s Wife”.  This spring, I completed my Master’s Degree in Aging Services and Management from USC.  I’ve changed jobs once, and currently find myself walking the sacred and powerful path of hospice care, (which in general is vastly misunderstood).  I also serve as Parish Nurse for Peace Memorial Evangelical Presbyterian Church (and yeah, there is a story there, too!)

With graduate school behind me and new initials added to my name, it is time to get back to the real work which God nudged me to do.  My passionate calling is to smooth the journey for families figuring out how to assist aging generations in ways that strengthen and empower all parties – from the adolescent “3rd gen”, the “Middle Gen” and the Elders.

For all the questions that I have had, I now have new resources and answers, from preventative care strategies while aging, to reinforcing the critical need for effective Co-Generational Care and primarily, making plans for the days that will come when each of us will discover there are no more interventions to keep these bodies going. Over the next weeks, I will break these topics down into manageable posts, with the intent of tying them all together into the soon-to-be-sent-to-publisher book “The Art of Parent Care: Journeys with the Aging Family”.

We stand at the edge of an ocean – facing our parents’ aging years, and looking to the horizon which harbors our own.  How we teach our children now will impact how we are cared for when such care is needed.  The strategies, resources and foundations for communication and planning are already overdue.  I hope you will come alongside me in the journey – to rethink how we care for ourselves and each other in our most glorious Elder years.

If you have a need for family care coaching, please feel free to reach out.  My strength is in helping people identify the obstacles to their ease of care coordination and help find creative solutions! If you have a need for a care advocate for a parent who lives away from you, I can assist you in finding someone who can come alongside them, where ever they are.

With love and hope for all our bright and safe futures,

Katherine Silver, RN, BSN, CCM, MASM

Blessed Christmas, One and All!

The Day has arrived.  Christmas!!!!

Christmas is a time for family — beginning with the story of a very Holy Family (so now you know where I stand on that ;-).  The story has been modified in interpretation over time, for who’s agenda we’ll never really know.  But today, sitting in the stillness of my own home and reflecting on what I know of birth, co-generational families and culture, I offer this version, taught to me 20 years ago by a Presbyterian Minister who’d lived several years in the Middle East.

Joseph was neither a procrastinator nor a goof.  He had family in Bethlehem, and he needed to return there with his pregnant wife, so they could be counted in the census.  It is unlikely that they left so close to her time that Mary was in labor while they traveled, and likely that they stayed in Bethlehem with family for some time.  It is probable that many branches of the family gathered together from distant parts, all there to “be counted”, filling to overflowing the modest home — built as was the custom with the “barn” connected to the inside by an adjacent wall.  The word for Guest Room is, I understand, the same as for “Inn”.  Perhaps, in this version, the guest space was previously occupied, and Mary and Joseph were given to rest in the common area, near the animals and the outdoors, the fire, the food and well – things comforting for a woman heavy with child.

Instead of the cold and lonely version —  colored by language and sensationalism and the idea that an entire culture would turn away a young laboring woman — let’s entertain for a moment a different first family gathering, the one we have actually come to emulate as we greet our own family from far and near during this festive week.  Imagine a rustic house overflowing with aunties and uncles, cousins and babies, everyone boisterous and contributing what they had to the meals, to the work, to entertaining themselves while the interminable census was conducted.  Family slumbering in all corners of house and stable, or outside in tents, making good use of this reunion to catch up with each other.  A celebratory air of family gathering together and the anticipation of a much prophesied Birth.  Men seated around table or fire, talking politics in hushed voices and pondering the Light in the sky and what it could portend.  Let us imagine the Elder Women in the family watching Mary with curiosity, knowing her time was drawing near by the way she moved, by the tired resignation in her countenance.  Wise women would recognize her early labor and begin to shush children and send them out with older siblings and cousins, away from the house.  Her back would be rubbed, her efforts encouraged and eased by the Aunties and Grannies,  Midwives in the family.  Those who knew would be waiting with anticipation the Birth of the King, foretold by prophets of old, and by those in Mary and Joseph’s own families.  This was not a birth to be taken lightly, not when Joseph’s entire family was gathering in Bethlehem to “be counted”.  It was a celebrated event, in the family and in the countryside and in Heaven, where choirs of Angels sang of the wonder.

I don’t think the vision of Jesus’ birth as much anticipated and welcomed, of Mary’s labor attended by women who loved and honored her as a sister, of the family having what they needed — clothing, food and shelter (and a warm, fresh manger to lay the baby in), diminishes the Miracle at all.  In fact, it brings more Love, more Light, more Peace, more consolation.  A King was born from very humble beginnings, but was much loved already — by angels and shepherds abiding, and by family greeting Him in celebration.

And so, maybe, this event didn’t happen around the Winter Solstice.  Perhaps as many believe, it happened in the summer and was later co-opted by the church to coincide with the return of the Light in the dark of midwinter (but hello! if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, it IS celebrated in the height of the summer! We are such snobs here north of the equator).

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

This phenomenon of days shortened and lengthened made me consider how we refer to life passing.  As in the Christmas story, we shift words and meanings to somehow minimize our love and connection, our delight in and mutual support within family and society.  We refer to our days as growing shorter at the end, but really, they don’t.  Whether we have 16 hours of daylight or dark, our days remain the same — 24 hours in a day, 7 days to a week.  Every day, we have the opportunity to embrace each minute and hour to the fullest.  Our actual days do not grow short.  Our patience might.  Our abilities may change and wane, our family and social circles ebb and flow, but our days — our wonderful, magical, glorious days — continue to have 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86400 seconds (if you check my math and find me in error feel free to leave a comment).

What grows short is our ability to take each of those days for granted.  How many seconds have slipped through our fingers — seconds when a kind word or a smile would have changed an encounter with someone?  How many minutes spent thinking about the ways we could show love and attention, but didn’t?  How many hours spent in futile endeavors that didn’t add value to our — or anyone else’s — life? As we embrace this Day, and the morrow, as family arrives or leaves or calls or writes, as children laugh or get fussy; Elders participate or rest, let us remember that each moment is an opportunity to add value, ease a burden, encourage with a word or smile, laugh out loud together.  We have infinite opportunities to “Be the Love in the World” that we celebrate this day.

It is only in looking backwards that we can measure the length of a life or the impact it had on those it touched.  Looking forward, we only have this moment to share the Love, Joy, Peace, Hope and humble service that this Holy Day represents.  My wish for all of you, dear friends and family (and much appreciated readers), is that the Love Light that shone on our Planet that day so many centuries ago, shines on you and your family, from the youngest to the Eldest, and fills you with Peace beyond all understanding through every trial you may encounter in the next year.  Peace to you, and Goodwill to all,  and a very, Merry Christmas.

Katherine

 

 

Some thoughts on Advance Directives

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Every emancipated adult should have an Advance Directive. Once a child is emancipated, parents can no longer make medical decisions for them by default, should the offspring become incapacitated. Often we limit our conversations about Advance Directives to Elders, thinking they are more likely to become cognitively impaired. However, the age cohort often overlooked are young adults between 18 and 30 who are at risk for devastating traumatic brain injury (TBI) — due to motor vehicle accidents, recreational accidents or substance abuse.
Preceding the Patient Self Determination Act (PSDA) was the tragic, 1970’s case of Karen Ann Quinlan, which attracted sensational media attention and brought the controversy between family desires, medical opinion, ethics and law into the cultural conversation. I have no doubt that her case, and those that followed, helped propel the PSDA into being. Shortly after the Quinlans lost their appeal to have their daughter’s life sustaining treatments revoked, I found myself working in a “convalescent hospital”. There I had the unforgettable experience of caring for a high school classmate, not even 21 at the time. Shortly after graduation, while walking on a lonely road late at night, he was struck by a car. Suffering spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, his quality of life was undeniably impaired.
I don’t think revoking heroic measures was an option in California in 1978, and this encounter, so close to heated debates about terminating life-support, left an impression on me. In recent years, I have had conversations with young adults that include thoughts about accidents and injury. They are quite clear “I don’t want to be kept alive if there is nothing left of ‘me’”. Youth are as important to include in the conversation about Advance Directives as are their Elder relatives, and for similar reasons. Loved ones can’t act on your behalf if they don’t know what you want.
We don’t like to talk about death and dying, about end of life mystery or transition. Life seems brighter if we ignore the shadow side and go merrily on our way. For us, it might be. If we’ve become incapable of making decisions for ourselves, chances are we won’t care much. Some won’t talk about death because they don’t want to upset their families or those that they love by “making them think about it”. The irony is that by trying to protect those we love by ignoring this reality, we force them into making decisions about us which they are ill-prepared to make. Some people don’t understand what Advance Directives are or how they can help.
I have watched this process when families are unprepared. It is often grueling and painful. The second-guessing about what “mom wants”, the contention between those mature enough to let go and those clinging to hope or fearing death can devastate a family that needs to support each other and prepare to grieve.
Most departments in my hospital, which serves a large retirement age population, assertively broach the topic of Advance Directives, and in my specialty clinic new patients are educated and offered a copy of our state’s Advance Directives workbook.
AD pamphlets read very similar from state to state. They are dry and medically oriented. Recently, I was introduced to a stellar revision of the standard Advance Directives, entitled “5 Wishes”. It reads very similar to the more bland AD pamphlet with three notable exceptions – “How comfortable I want to be”, “How I want people to treat me”, and “What I want my loved ones to know”. Those tools could soften and gently personalize the conversation about end-of-life decision-making.
Those three wishes give the powerless – those who can only stand by while someone they love is dying – specific tasks to perform to enhance the quality of the last days and hours and instill a sacred dignity to the art of dying. I wish that they had been a part of my own mother’s AD process. At 88, however, she was not very open to talking about what she wanted (besides that she didn’t want her children to hurt). Baby Boomer Elders may be more forthcoming about what would make their final passage sacred and meaningful, (or even fun and joyful!) My Depression Era mother was not. We had to guess. How much gentler it would have been if we had known what was important to her, to enhance her comfort.
There are few reasons for any emancipated adult to not have the discussion about end of life wishes — from medical care choices to what music you want playing when you are unconscious or passing — and legally initiate appropriate Advance Directives. Perhaps more people would engage in them if they knew that:
1. They can be revoked at any time by the issuer.
2. They only go into effect if the issuer cannot make medical decisions for themselves due to inability to communicate their wishes.
3. It alters the responsibility for making life-to-death medical decisions to the issuer, having had a discussion about their values and desires with their appointed representative. It is an act of personal empowerment — one is less “victim” to the end-of-life passage, and more a participant.

4. The process of reviewing the choices one must make when completing their advance directives opens the door to conversation valuable in any relationship, “what to do when I am dying”.
5. It is kind for the family to have decisions articulated and communicated in advance.
Inadequate understanding is a barrier to completing Advance Directives. The concept that it is somehow a “death sentence” or supported by “death panels” can link Advance Directives to one of the most emotionally charged phrases to come from the detractors of the Affordable Care Act, though the PSDA precedes the ACA by more than a decade. For those wishing to engage in all means of life-sustaining treatment, it is still important to appoint a representative to direct medical care and long term care choices from home health, nursing home to hospice. The idea that Advance Directives are only for those wishing to halt life-sustaining treatment is a common misunderstanding of it’s purpose.
There is a risk of exploitation and that needs to be guarded against, and is, by the stipulation that the appointed representative cannot be a caregiver or employee of a facility where the issuer receives care. It is possible to appoint the wrong person for the wrong reasons. A representative should be someone the issuer is confident will follow their wishes, who has knowledge of the care they have been receiving and their medical history, as well as their values and desires.
Life is short, the time is now to think about what you would want and who would be your voice if you couldn’t make your desires known. Have the conversation with your children and your folks.

For more information on “5 Wishes” visit http://www.agingwithdignity.org/five-wishes.php

Full list: Is there a primary stroke center near you? – USATODAY.com

Full list: Is there a primary stroke center near you? – USATODAY.com.

I hadn’t heard of Stroke Care Units until very recently. The data on recovery, reducing long term disability and reduced recurrence of stroke is significant for people who receive care from an SCU rather than an ICU/CCU or medical/surgical floor. The exact mechanism is not clearly identified, but whatever the reason, the outcomes are better and the stays tend to be shorter.

Is there the Stroke Care Unit near you???

Moving from “Burden” to “Participant”, a paradigm shift in the roles the 1st generation can play in the extended family.

I hear this at least once a week – someone will state they don’t want to be a burden on their family. They don’t want to live with adult children, they don’t want to ask for help if they live alone. It hurts my heart to hear this, I learn so much from the Elders I know and enjoy sharing time and stories. I don’t want to see my role in my family change from participant — from being essential to our joyous and goal-oriented function — to feeling that I have nothing of value to contribute and would only be a draw on resources. A “burden”.

 

New American Dictionary defines burden thus:
burden |ˈbərdn|noun
1 a load, esp. a heavy one.
• a duty or misfortune that causes hardship, anxiety, or grief; a nuisance
• the main responsibility for achieving a specified aim or task
• a ship’s carrying capacity; tonnage:

2 (the burden) the main theme or gist of a speech, book, or argument
• the refrain or chorus of a song. (italics mine)

How did we come to believe that as we age in our family, our role evolves from essential service to a “misfortune that causes hardship, anxiety, grief”, or that we become a “nuisance”??? I have fixed ideas about how this shift from essential, valued, integrated member of the family disintegrated in our Post WWII culture, (you can find them addressed in Chapter One of “Holding Hands: Journeys with the Aging Family” to be released in 2013). More important here is refuting the myth of the invisible, devalued, aging adult and moving from “burden” to “participant” in the co-generational family.
The “burden” concept begs the question, “What do we need to change so that Elders stop defining themselves and their needs as a burden?”  How do we help them quantify the value they bring to the family?
It would be nice if Elders in a co-generational setting were more visible in our media. Portrayals in popular culture “cameo” grandparents, aunts and uncles. They are not part of the weekly story line, and are often written out of our own storylines as well.
This invisibility comes from both sides. Our aging parents, who began their families in the neo-television/post WWII era, also have no model for integrating parents. Likely, they moved away from their own families of origin to the suburbs after the war, leaving their own parents to the care of each other, their siblings or a child who stayed geographically close. To have parents live with us after WWII was interpreted as a weakness – not cutting “apron strings” or being overly involved. “You aren’t going to let your parents tell you what to do, are you?” as though taking advice from those who have been there/done that, would be shameful. Not independent. Not trendy.

Our very narrow tolerance of anything “different” bled into the way we learned to not care for our Elders. On the other end of the parenting spectrum, we were expected to cut our children loose at the earliest legal age and start planning our midlife, renewed “independent, Golden Years” with a sense of relief that all that family stuff was done, checked off the to-do list of life. I’m here to tell you, that was all a bunch of hooey.
What we gained instead were expensive and low-quality institutions to house Elders, middle-aged parents suffering from “empty nest syndrome”, new retirees suffering from a lack of purpose and sense of value. I stand firmly behind the belief, from four decades of observation and one of professional exposure, that humans are most decidedly NOT meant to be independent, autonomous islands in the stream. We hunger for connectedness, integration, participation, feeling valued and loved, and contributing to family and community. The tribal model of survival is as ancient as our earliest recorded histories, there is a reason why. This experiment of division has not promoted individual or family health as our members have aged.  It fractured family resources rather than concentrating family wealth and resources of time, and now creates a discontent in the Elder generation which too often leads to great feelings of sadness and loss. Where they may desire connection and support, they deny their own needs because somewhere along the line they bought the lie that to do so would be burdensome to the very people they gave life and love to.
This is wrong.

Recognizing how we got here is part of the solution. The other part is asking yourself how you show  you recognize the contribution your parents, aunts and uncles, Elder family friends make in your life now. Reminiscing is great, but subtly reinforces the concept that those days of value have passed.

  • Why is their presence important NOW?
  • How do they add value to your life NOW?
  • What could you not do without them for NOW?

In the early self help years, we called these “ego strokes” and they developed a reputation for being unhealthy. They aren’t. We all need to know that we matter to the people around us, and no age cohort needs that more than the one that has been rendered invisible, comical, burdensome in 40 years of televised cultural teaching.
What can your parents teach your children – essential family or cultural knowledge, survival skills, games and playfulness – that you can’t due to limited resources or time? Looking at the generations that stand on either side of you, what do they have to offer each other? Child care? Cooking lessons? Learning to budget money? Homework supervision? Being the licensed driver while a teen gets their supervised hours in? Living models of history?  Can your child learn how to express love and service to an Elder family member, just because it’s the right thing to do? (Teach them now with your parents, and they will teach your grandchildren in time).
This is how we rebuild a cultural model of family members taking care of each other across the lifespan. This model is seamless, no one gets left out. Everyone knows they are important to the quality of someone else’s life, to the security of the family and it’s members, and love and respect have ample room to grow.
Referring back to that original definition, the alternate to “nuisance” was:
2 (the burden) the main theme or gist of a speech, book, or argument
• the refrain or chorus of a song.

I choose to think this is where the descriptor as Elder family member being “a burden” first came from. As the historians of our family and culture, that is a much more tender and fitting definition of those who have come before us, shaped us, nurtured us, raised us up. May our Elder Generation come again to be revered as carrying the chorus of our family song.

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Happy Father’s Day,
Katherine