Activities & Wellness

For seven years, I was a caregiver for an older woman with rheumatoid arthritis. She was happy to have me around to help her with the daily tasks that had become difficult, such as preparing her meals, decluttering the house, and even going through her mail and writing to her grandkids. But there were certain things she loved to do that just wouldn’t be the same if I did them for her. For example, she could no longer manage the fine brushwork on the models she used to paint, and she could no longer play the piano because her hands became sore quickly.

Balance is something so many of us take for granted until we lose it. I realized this for the first time a few years ago when I was grocery shopping with my grandmother. After years of picking her up every Sunday so that she could get her food for the week, we’d settled into a nice little routine. I’d follow her around with the grocery cart while she buzzed about, gathering her favorite rye bread, European butter, and Hungarian salami.