I have always been fascinated with how the human brain works. So, after bringing my parents out to California, I wondered why they, as smart as they were, tolerated so many numbing East Coast winters when they could have long ago come out to live in the sunshine—where their joints wouldn’t ache from the cold and their only child could come by for lunch? Had they seen themselves as pioneers from New Jersey or survivors of challenges? Maybe the way Frank Sinatra had crooned of New Yorkers: “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”[1]
But years of practicing psychotherapy had taught me that people have different values and, therefore, their reasoning can seem a bit inexplicable to others with different priorities. I’d also learned that my road to greater contentment lay in being grateful that my parents were here now, rather than understanding why it had taken so long to get them here. There were innumerable things I wanted to do so my folks would feel welcome.
Now that I’d started making many of their important decisions, my main goal was to help them enjoy healthier, richer lives in their California setting. While doing POP long distance, my default position had been to be overly protective. In the past, I’d erred on the side of doing more than was necessary for them rather than less. I’d thought long and hard and always planned ahead. I had lots of Plan B’s, C’s, and even a few D’s. I was the POPoster Mom for “Be prepared!” Maybe that had been my way of compensating for not being in the same city where they lived. But now that I was virtually “down the block,” I wanted to get it right and avoid doing so much for them that I might undermine their sense of independence and self-confidence, I had seen other POParents “over-do” their attention and involvement. I would need to discover the right balance—and, as they aged and we continued the POPcycle, I knew that right balance point would move.
How would I know when to help? How could I accurately hit the mark and do neither too much nor too little for them? The last thing I wanted was to undermine my parents’ dignity or negate their skills. Particularly when they were first getting used to their assisted-living facility (ALF) and to our new relationship in this California location, I wanted Mom to feel comfortable that I wasn’t going to micromanage everything or run her life. I wanted Dad to know that my “helping” would fall far short of cutting his food into little cubes.
My goal was to see what worked for Lillian and Jack in their ALF and then do more of that. I figured that the three of us would do our best if I stood back a bit and took a little time to observe how they were doing on their own at the ALF. Breathing through my angst about not having everything figured out immediately, I reminded myself that such a thing was impossible, as things just took longer with aging parents. But it was wonderful to realize that I too could slow down! I just needed to better observe how they were faring in their new environment.
When I slowed down and held the intention to observe rather than assume that I knew what would be best for them, I was better able to discover what was actually occurring. Thus, I also learned to be more discerning. I found I could more clearly hear when my parents needed me and when they didn’t. Maybe I could even wait until they asked for my help. I wanted them to feel confident and to keep “stretching,” and now I wondered again: If I didn’t run in so quickly, would they and could they do more for themselves?
Since beginning POP, I’d always encouraged Mom and Dad to be as self-sufficient as possible. I knew that by being too protective, whatever that was, I might be undermining their ability to do things for themselves. That situation could also make them lazy and become depressing to them, weakening the very “muscles” we all wanted strengthened.
Finding that fine line between too much and not enough help, and then living up to it, was challenging because it was ever changing. In spite of starting many a visit promising myself to do no more than was warranted, I often found myself drifting into “autopilot,” as I now termed it, and “over-parenting” them. I’d be lifting something they could easily move or offering to make a dinner arrangement when they were perfectly capable of doing that for themselves. When I saw it, I’d stop myself. I could see I was beginning to treat my own parents like they were children, not the adults with some limitations they truly were. I knew that my continuing to act in that way wouldn’t be good for our relationship. So, in addition to subtly watching them, I kept a watch on myself as well.
Aiming to make their transition seamless, I reviewed what they had needed Florence to do. When Jack and Lillian had still been in their NYC home, they’d needed minimal physical help from Florence on the five days each week she was there. She assisted with a few of their basic activities of daily living (ADLs) like taking baths and dressing. But most of her work had involved assisting them with their instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), like seeing that they took their medications; food shopping, preparation, and cleanup; housecleaning; and laundry. Florence also had accompanied and transported Mom and Dad to their doctor appointments, rehab, haircuts, and trips to the accountant at tax season.
Many of those tasks would now be done for my parents by me or at the ALF. Their bathrooms would be cleaned, healthy meals prepared, and other domestic matters attended to. Mom and Dad would also be furnished a variety of new recreational and health opportunities such as exercise programs, outings, lectures, and trips to the mall. I’d anticipated having to pay for a fair number of extra hours of caregiving once they were at the ALF and was pleasantly surprised to learn how little additional help they seemed to need.
Before long, Mom and Dad were participating in their new life and community. The ALF had its own rhythm and schedules, and they seemed to have no trouble adapting to it. They were happily taking the van to the mall to do some small shopping trips and remarking on how good the food tasted. Mom was even attending some chair yoga classes.
Now that they were finally close by, I looked forward to more direct contact with their medical providers. I went about the process of interviewing and hiring a small medical team for them and then watched it grow. They needed a dentist, cardiologist, eye doctor, audiologist, geriatric internist, and geriatric psychiatrist. I also wanted my parents to go to my longevity specialist, hoping that seeing him would lengthen and strengthen their lifetime with me. Eventually, they both would also have to undergo the cataract surgeries that almost all older parents have, requiring another specialist. Dad’s fall would need us to have a brain surgeon and a whole rehab team; Mom’s fall would require an orthopedic surgeon and several rehab teams as well. But I get ahead of myself.
I was recommended to a kind dentist who had retirement in his future in a nearby town and set up an initial appointment there for Lillian and Jack. I researched a good local optometrist and arranged for them to get new glasses. Repeatedly, I took a frustrated Mom to her very patient audiologist. Improving the quality of hearing can be an almost impossible goal, as I have discovered, even with my very wealthy older patients who could pay anything for better hearing aids, but Mom’s audiologist tried over and again.
I trekked with my aging parents the hour and a half drive each way to work with Dr. Barry Fox, the well-respected “longevity doctor” I used. Getting Mom and Dad to make the long ride into downtown Los Angeles to see him was tough. But I insisted. A contemporary of my folks, Barry was still actively practicing medicine and dispensing sage advice, dietary supplements after testing for their body’s deficits, and other disease prevention measures. Barry was always inspiring, and I wanted my parents to receive the same high-quality holistic care I sought for myself.
By taking them to these doctor visits, I got to know their physicians fairly well. Most of them were immensely kind and caring to my mother and father, but I also knew that older patients receive more thorough medical attention when a POParent attends the visit with them. I considered my POP job to extend far beyond being the driver. I actively participated, asked probing questions my parents didn’t think to ask or felt intimidated about because doctors are authority figures. I also helped by gently correcting my parents’ short-term recall of recent events or even their long-term memory. After the visits, I would follow up with them to see they were adhering to their doctor’s requirements and reminding them of the subtler suggestions they hadn’t heard or remembered to do.
Back in the day when it was less common to do so, many of my parents’ physicians gave me access to them beyond ordinary office hours via their cell phones. I was delighted to be able to locate such competent and generous people. I knew, from some of those POP families I’d personally coached, that this wasn’t a usual practice at that time, but my family and I were very fortunate in this regard too, and I will always be very grateful.
By now it was becoming natural for me to take care of things for them all the time—to be the parent—instead of the other way around, as it used to be. My next step, after seeking to advance their health, was helping with their finances. I set up a meeting at a neighborhood bank branch, introduced them to their new banker, and opened a checking account for them. I arranged for their Social Security checks to be deposited directly into their new account, so they’d have their money regularly deposited without any effort on their part. I was listed as a cosignatory on their checking account, so I could write checks for them and, should there be a problem, I would be advised. Since I ended up writing all their checks—for caregiver care, medicine, and supplemental insurance—and balanced their accounts, they never met the banker again.
I also took on as my POP job to arrange for much of my parents’ cultural lives when they were newly in town. I modeled myself on the way I’d seen them raise me in this regard and felt like I was somehow honoring them when I followed their lead in my POParenting. I was very young when my parents first introduced me to music, comedy, and art, sharing their love of these with me. Even when they could barely afford the price of admission, Jack and Lillian felt it important to expose their young daughter to theater, museums, and even opera, which they didn’t particularly like.
I was actually seven when my parents took me to my first Broadway play, Inherit the Wind. It was an amazing spectacle with brilliant acting, writing, and directing. The play reenacted the famous Scopes trial from the 1920s when a Southern teacher is banned from teaching the truth of evolution to his students. Seeing on stage how lawyers could play such a meaningful role in bringing about or blocking societal change and being incredibly moved by all I saw, I decided—then and there—to become an attorney so I, too, could do good.
Now it was my turn to take Jack and Lillian to plays, art museums, and cultural events in twenty-first-century Los Angeles. What a surprise I had in store for me! Far more important than the entertainment being presented to my folks was their own level of physical comfort. They no longer enjoyed walking around museums or being driven through them in wheelchairs. The effort it took them to get to and exit from the theater, their difficulty hearing the performers, and their dislike of “missing dinner” at the ALF began to be insurmountable barriers to the cultural enrichment I was trying to provide them. What a lesson! Part of me wanted my parents to want to go to cultural events but if I really listened to what they wanted, they wanted to stay home most of the time. I began to wonder for whom was I offering these opportunities. Them? Or me so I could still see them as more vibrant and into living as they had been when they were younger?
So, I realized I would have to adapt. I tried coming up with fun opportunities that might be more comfortable for my aging parents. My motivation was good: I didn’t want their worlds to become any smaller. I wanted to keep their brains engaged and to heed the warning of “use it or lose it.” But this, like many other things, wasn’t up to me.
After a while, I learned from them. As a result, Mom, Dad, and I spent many an afternoon visiting around the radio, like the days of their youth before television. I found the local “time of your life” radio stations that played old show tunes and even some standards that Jack himself had written. We’d sing along.
I watched my father relish his peaceful times. He’d borrow a book from the residents’ library, settle into a comfortable chair, take off his glasses and be in heaven. I’d smile finding him buried under his book. When Dad’s memory started to fail him, I’d sometimes notice he was reading the same book more than once. It reminded me of children endlessly craving their favorite book or DVD. Rereading never seemed to bother the very young or the very old. I tried to not let it bother me either.
Decades earlier, doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzles was a family ritual we’d all engaged in and loved. Lillian had been the real puzzle champion, completing the Times puzzles daily—and in pen, a real feat. Especially after her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the fact that she continued to try her hand at them so delighted me that I made a deal with her: for the rest of her days, as long as she wanted new puzzle books, I’d happily buy them.
Next, I checked out their new neighborhood’s religious opportunities, something they’d done for me so long ago. Their ALF had religious people who held services there on special holidays and other occasions. Even though my parents weren’t very involved in their religion, the fact that their ALF offered a piece of their own cultural tradition right there at home helped to make their transition easier.
Mom and Dad liked dining at the ALF and the regularity of the meals and menu offerings there. Nonetheless, they also enjoyed my taking them out to eat, and doing so became one of our new rituals, especially after they lost interest in going to plays or concerts. They were particularly snooty about their New York delicatessens. “Jane, you’re out in the West. None of these delis can touch the Madison Deli near the apartment or the Stage in midtown,” they’d boast with personal pride. Of course, they were right. They knew their New York fare.
On holidays, I’d try to take them out somewhere special. My requirements for such restaurants during our POPcycle were: they’d tried it before and already liked it, the acoustics permitted carrying on a conversation, it was located a short drive from their ALF, and it had a patient wait staff.
My Mom had been a foodie and used to share her joy of trying new tastes with me. However, at this juncture, her taste buds and sense of smell were, as most of us in our late eighties, dulled by age and maybe a bit by eating the food at the ALF three times a day. So, like with kids, my mother would often celebrate holidays by eating too much of a new taste or gorging on a large meal and then a gooey dessert. Getting her home before she got sick in the car was itself a challenge. I had forgotten that reality until writing this, which makes me see how, as so often happens with POParenting, I’ve filtered my memories through the mist of time passing and missing my parents.
Neither Jack nor Lillian seemed to be making new friends easily, if at all, at the ALF. Dad was content reading, watching his shows on television, and spending his time with Mom and with me. He didn’t find any men who really interested him as friends, and I could understand how his unusual profession and life experiences might make it hard to find peers. One day I approached him and talked about his absence of sociability, to which he replied: “Look around, Jane. Think about my interests and the life I’ve had. I just don’t see anyone here I’d really want to spend much time with, aside from you and your Mom, of course. Would you want to be friends with these guys?”
I thought about trying to fix this problem. I even went so far as to check out the more sophisticated-looking couples at their AL when I visited. But I drew the line at setting up playdates for my parents. Talk about overprotecting them!
As Mom and Dad were becoming somewhat familiar faces at their new home, I did come up with one idea that had some socializing overtones. The ALF often staged theme-centered evenings for the residents and, when I approached the administrator with the idea of holding an event—a Frank Sinatra evening with live singing—she was game. The evening turned out to be a huge success. The social director/singer crooned out all the favorite Sinatra songs, including a few written by Dad. Jack didn’t say a whole lot about it, but he looked really pleased. As I’d hoped, this garnered him some brief celebrity status at the facility, and Mom and I had a blast, too.
As I was figuring out how to become a better local POParent, I aimed to include some of the POP Family Coaching tools I’d recommended that had proven useful to other families. One such technique involves approaching your own parents as if they were complete strangers. When we meet new people, even on airplanes, we often relate to them with curiosity and much interest rather than assuming we already understand them or their motivations. What I hoped to do with that tool was to develop the ability to experience these people I already know well as if they were new to me, to hear what they’re saying with a kind of neutral fascination.
I wanted to try that out and act as if these intimates of mine were new to me. In a way, my parents were new people to me. We’d been living apart for over thirty-five years, and each of us had grown and experienced so much during that time. If I could give up the idea (for this exercise) that I knew them well, or was supposed to, I might actually be able to “meet” my parents where they were now.
When I became able to offer Jack and Lillian the respect, inquiry, and interest I gave to new people, my relationship with them improved dramatically. It wasn’t that hard to do, since I truly aimed to discover who Lillian and Jack had become as people over these decades, aside from simply being my parents. This required that I ask more questions, listen more fully to their responses, and pass fewer judgments. By making just these slight alterations, I noticed my parents began to feel more respected and more at ease with their move, as did I.
Another technique I teach others in POP Family Coaching that I thought would be useful to apply at this time was “reframing.” I have spoken previously with you about this well-respected tool. I teach family members how to look more neutrally, without so much emotion, at what’s actually occurring in order to discover other ways to interpret what’s happening by thinking differently. This allows us to take a pause and not react automatically or overly emotionally. By using our intelligence to assign a more uplifting interpretation to events, we can change our moods and expand our options for solutions. When I pictured the scenario of my parents’ move as dragging my enfeebled elderly parents to their last resting place in a senior institution, I felt horrible. But when I reframed what was happening, I could see the situation as welcoming dear old friends/parents to their new home, town, and new life. Thinking about it this way, I felt less depressed. It wasn’t that I was fooling myself; rather I was adding another, different point of view into my thinking that resulted in my feeling calmer and, actually, better able to help them.
Settling my folks into their new life in California—finding them their ALF, doctors, banker, and delicatessen—was yet another opportunity to see the “role reversal,” or the “Circle of Life,” as some of us prefer to call it. I favor the term “Circle of Life” to explain my POP experience because it evokes a sense of continuity, predictability, and unending connection. The term “role reversal,” may be challenging if it suggests interfering with the natural order and that things are somehow being forced backward in the universe. Taking care of an aging Lillian and Jack felt oddly right to me, even orderly.
I had the thought that I really wanted to become a better POParent to them than my parents had been to me. I wasn’t coming from the position of being competitive, but I wanted to become the best me—whether I was being a POParent, a lawyer, or a therapist. I loved it when I could exceed my own previous levels of POParental patience or kindness. I felt like I was healing spots in my own heart when I could act even more compassionately when parenting them than they had when parenting me. Jack and Lillian weren’t the only ones changing. I was changing too.
The direction of the POPcycle is relentless: my parents did become more and more dependent, and I became more and more responsible. Once I’d begun managing certain things for my folks, they never asked to regain control of those things. Our roles and functions were in constant flux, going one way, and that required dexterity on my part. The only reliable POP predictor was unpredictability, but, at least now, I had my parents settled in and closer to me. A long-distance phone call wouldn’t be all I had to help me diagnose a stroke or prevent a suicide. I could be right there.
When my beloved husband Al died in the late 1970s, I suffered an amazing loss in my life. Fortunately, our sons were incredibly supportive and my career as a high-powered magazine editor was still in high gear back then. My children, who lived all over the country, encouraged me to continue my life, even marry another man two years later. And so I did.
My second husband was an advertising executive that Al and I had known in business for over twenty years. We too had a fine marriage, but after fourteen years, it was cut short when he died in Houston where we’d moved. Dealing with my second widowhood, I returned to New York City shortly thereafter and retired unofficially. I was seventy-nine then.
I traveled to Europe and Asia with women friends whom I had cherished all my life and for a while, that was fascinating. But inevitably, age took its toll and travel became more complicated. Eventually even the pleasure of visiting my two older sons where they lived, far from New York was undermined because of how exhausting the travel had become for me.
Soon thereafter, I also took several falls. One of those required my temporarily living in a home to recuperate fully. My three sons apparently talked together and reached a consensus: because I already needed some help at my own place and because of my advanced age, their mom would need to leave the elegant apartment she cherished. She could either move into a secure senior citizen facility—one that would accommodate her and her priceless architecturally designed modern furniture, paintings, and sculpture—or she could move in with one of them.
Live with my children? No way! I adore them and their families, but living with them in their homes would be trouble and trauma! But could I live in a senior facility full of old folks whom I believed would be standoffish or suspicious of a newcomer or some hot shot “career lady?” No way! Where did those two “options leave me now, I wondered?
The kids persisted, pressing me for a final decision. As I now like to say, I chose the lesser of two evils. While “screaming and kicking,” I opted for a senior facility where I could live in my own apartment with my own things and could eat as many meals as I wished to pay for. In the new facility I could swim, watch movies, and invite my boys and their families to the private dining room for holiday dinners with me. The staff here knows to call up to my apartment if I don’t show up somewhere in the building by 10:30 in the morning. I am independent and my sons feel safe!
To act like the editor I once used to be—and make this long wonderful story shorter—within a month of arriving there, I was asked to manage our facility’s library. That job is something I’ve done and adore doing all these years later. Most importantly within six months of my arrival, I’d met six new women who were the most wonderful people, right here in my own building. They’ve become my dear friends, museum companions, and loving confidantes.
Had I not gone along when my kids insisted on it, I might not have come here or to a place like this until much later in my life if at all. Had I put off facing the inevitable—I wouldn’t always be able to care for myself—I feel certain that the best part of my years here, the companionship piece, might never have occurred. Part of the beauty of my sons’ timing was that I was still able to make new and deep connections with other people. I’ve seen with other new residents that if they arrive here too late in their lives, it can be really difficult to make new friends and have a good time with other peers.
Now when my family comes to visit, they kid me that I can’t find the time in my busy agenda to see them. Well, that’s not really true and never will be. I’ll always make time for them. I speak my mind and do so loudly, and I love my sons most for not allowing my possible displeasure to stop them from saying and doing what they knew was right for me.
I see that my children have indeed become my parents, and I toast them and their POParenting ways. They must have had a good role model!
Moving is stressful at any age. If you’re taking your older parents away from the comforts of their home, the places they’re familiar with and things they know, you can plan on having some stressful days. You will need to manage your own as well as your parents’ anticipated angst. You will also need to respond to their questions, however many times they may ask. You may find yourself absorbing a lot of emotions. And, if your parents are like mine, they will worry before the move, as it’s happening, and maybe even after it’s over. But sooner or later, they will begin to enjoy their new life. And after a while, hopefully, they’ll be grateful to you for where they’ve landed.
If your parents can comprehend it, your first step will be to explain the whole move to them from start to finish. In many ways, their understanding the scenario is less important than their confidence that you know what you’re doing. It’s likely they’ll want to know at least the following: when is the move; how will it happen; who will help; what will happen to their valuables; how will the furniture from their three-story house fit into a one-bedroom unit.
Do not underestimate the significance of your parents’ leaving their home—their place of dominion and control—forever. Even if your parents aren’t very talkative and even if it feels odd, it will help if you invite them to sit down and share all their concerns about the move with you, one-by-one. Listen fully. Respond kindly and be as specific in your answers as is appropriate to their level of understanding. Never make fun of any of your parents’ worries. You may want to dismiss your folks as classic worriers or believe that what they’re bothered by isn’t very important.
I learned over time to take my parents’ expressed concerns seriously. Even many years after Mom was diagnosed with dementia, any time she expressed a complaint, I found that I needed to carefully check it out. You should honor and respectfully evaluate your parents’ apprehensions and complaints.
Their upcoming move may be one where your parents are in less control than at any other time in their adult lives. Under the stress, they may become aggressive because of their current lack of control or their inability to remember information you’ve already told them. For your dad who will no longer be able to putter around in the garage or have his special room to watch the games in, leaving home can be depressing. Your parents may be sad at losing the companionship of dear friends or the delights of their old neighborhood. Your mom may say it wasn’t in her plans to lose her kitchen, her sewing room, or her tub. She too may leave home kicking and screaming, like Evan, or worse yet, bawling like a child.
Think of what this move must be like for your parents or your beloved in-laws, who may by now have a limited sense of hearing, sight, and smell, and may have limited funds as well. They’re watching brawny strangers handling their precious, breakable possessions and packing up their undergarments. They’re leaving almost everyone they know to go to a place they’ve never even seen near “their daughter-in-law’s house.” They can’t take all their furniture and beloved art with them because they’re going into a small apartment or your house. They’re afraid of losing lifelong neighborhood friends and that no one will call them long distance on their new phone number (which they’re having trouble remembering). And they’re departing from the home where they raised you, maybe recovered from cancer, maybe grieved the death of your sister, faced whatever events of their life story that took place within those walls.
Your ability to demonstrate your POP compassion at this significant moment may make a big difference to your relationship with your mom and dad. Aim to keep engaging with your parents and attending to their requests with patience even when they repeat themselves. This will help keep them grounded and will add to their confidence in you. During the move, your focus will need to be on resolving logistics and on your parents’ immediate concerns.
The move may itself bring up some latent fears your parents have been having, as it is full of potential trauma. At some later point, after they’re settled in, depending on your parents’ capabilities to do so, you may wish to address deeper, underlying fears they may be contemplating or even obsessing over, such as their own mortality or concerns about your or your siblings’ future. By being in an ongoing dialogue with them, hopefully you can allay some of these worries or bring them to a professional who can help.
Days before the move, you will have asked your parents to select (or you can choose for them, if they can’t) some of their treasured items to hand-carry to their new home. These things will likely evoke welcoming feelings for them in the new place. Consistency is very calming. Seeing and touching their familiar, loved things in their new residence may mitigate some of the negative feelings your parents have associated with leaving home. The more infirm your parents have become, the more they may enjoy having a few of their favorite objects around when they arrive.
If you can bring familiar smells, tastes, and sights in their new place, that could ease some of the challenge to your parents’ transition. Doing this may be easiest when your parents are moving into your home (or that of one of your siblings) where cooking traditional foods, perhaps using your mom’s recipes, is common, or other traditions reminiscent of their cultural roots are present. Your decision to lug your dad’s favorite TV chair and ottoman to his new home, heavy though they were, may make all the difference in his feeling comfortable there. And if you’re moving your parents to this country from overseas, bring along some of their favorite regional foods and find a place to refresh your supply: that alone could prove more valuable than you can imagine.
Your kids likely trained you as parents to bring along a beloved stuffed animal, however ragged, wherever you took them. I recommend you apply a similar principle if your parents have to spend time in a lonely hospital room. Bring along one or two of your parent’s favorite objects. Handling those things may lower your parent’s blood pressure and speed recovery. Seeing the beloved treasure or trinket can trigger a feeling of being loved and safe.
Once your parents have arrived at their new home, you can take a series of deep breaths. The first thing you’ll want to do is lower your expectations of your parents’ immediate appreciation and joy. They may react much less positively than you’d hoped. Even if you’re certain their new home is safer, cleaner, and now closer to you, don’t expect them to share your view that it’s necessarily better. Not yet. Give your parents some time to adjust (remember “old dogs and new tricks”). Remember that you carefully chose their new place and that major adjustments take some time to absorb.
This is the time to consider how else to make your parents feel settled. If your mom loves playing canasta, maybe you can find her a game where she’s at a similar skill level with her fellow players. If your dad would still like to putter with tools but doesn’t have his garage to do so anymore, maybe you can enroll him in a shop class or ask him to do a small work task at your home.
If your parents are too aged to socialize much or aren’t very talkative, you might consider getting them a pet—presuming it’s allowed in their new facility. The permission to bring pets may play a role in your decision of which facility best suits your parents. Being around domesticated animals can provide extraordinary companionship and make a real difference in the quality of your parents’ lives. Just be wary about any type or breed that might require too much maintenance.
Since many seniors have limited intimate physical contact and get touched only occasionally, they can suffer from a kind of failure to thrive like an infant when left untouched. Who knows, maybe a cat or a bird could provide your parents a whole new lease on life. I’ve seen it happen. Because of the therapeutic benefits, there are agencies that bring trained animals to visit in nursing homes. If your parents’ facility doesn’t already do so, you might ask them to consider it.
For their own protection, there may come a time, and usually does in every POPcycle when you (or someone on TEAM POP) will need to take over some or all of the financial and legal aspects of your folks’ life—their checkbooks, investments, dealings with Medicare, and so on. How will you know when that is? Your parents’ geriatrician may advise you, or your parents may give you clues that your involvement is appropriate. You may discover they’ve paid someone twice, having forgotten that they’d already sent a check. Older parents are frequent victims of financial fraud schemes, so you will want to be alert to take on their finances before something dire occurs.
It may be that a small step is all that’s needed. Helping your parents with their money often involves small incremental changes, like much of POP. You may go from no information to being emailed copies of your parents’ bank account statements on a monthly basis to being added to the accounts as a cosignatory.
Even more serious steps may become appropriate in your family. Taking the proper steps in a timely fashion may help shield your parents from real disaster. Based upon your continuing observations of your parents’ abilities and shortcomings, the designated person may now be writing all their checks and making all their fiscal and investment decisions. Wherever your parents are on this part of the POPcycle, when you’re moving them to a new location, that’s often a very good time to make some needed changes.
Taking over many financial responsibilities relieved my parents and me of much anxiety. Although some elderly parents will be relieved, others may be of two minds about your having this type, or extent, of control over their affairs. Your parents may resist, especially if you approach it right after their move. At that moment, although your mom and dad will appreciate having you there to back them up, they may feel they’ve lost so much control—over their homes, bodily functions, and even their minds—that they’ll hesitate to cede more control, especially over their finances. Should this be an issue, you or the banker, broker, or accountant should patiently explain to your parents the benefits of having a second person on their account to review their statements, balance their accounts, and deal with any delinquency notices.
You will want to scout out your folks’ new locale for whatever else they need or want nearby. For your family, that may mean golf courses, churches, shoe repair stores, vegan restaurants, or yoga studios. Before signing them up with a pharmacy, you’ll want to know if it is on your parents’ Medicare Plan, delivers prescriptions, is open 24/7, offers flu shots, and crosschecks your parents’ medications for dangerous drug interactions. Like me, you’ll want to help your parents find physicians, caregivers, and maybe even new friends. You may have to sign them up for phone, internet, or other communication services and then show them, over and over, how to use the remote control or the default settings.
Finally, as you aim to bring your parents into the twenty-first century, you may wish to share with them some of the advantages and advances in alternative and complementary medicines. Today many doctors trained in Western medicine agree that there are numerous positive results achieved with practices that might have been considered unorthodox or untested in your parents’ youth. Similarly, many reputable studies have validated a number of techniques that at one time seemed more questionable.
Your parents may find their painful and chronic conditions vastly improved by practices such as yoga, meditation, acupuncture and acupressure, chiropractic adjustments, or visualization techniques. Medicare may not yet pay for some practices and procedures, such as use of appropriate supplements for aging bodies, naturopathic substances instead of pharmaceuticals, and other alternative treatments, but things are changing. You may need to advocate for anything outside of the ordinary with your parents’ providers and convince your parents of the value for them of anything outside their comfort zone. But as good POParents, one of the things you can try to do is to get your aging loved ones better health in their new homes.
Sooner or later, the time will come when your whirlwind of tasks begins to quiet down; your parents will find themselves adjusting to their move, and you will adapt too. Maybe you’ll even hear them say they’re enjoying their new home and transplanted lives.
From “New York, New York,” written by John Kander and Fred Ebb and published by EMI/Uniart Catalog, Inc.