Aging

7 Ways to Strengthen Family Bonds When Moving an Aging Parent into Your Home

Nancy looked around the dinner table and smiled. Seeing her two young boys, husband, and mother all sitting together, chatting about their days, made her heart warm with gratitude. It had been a year since she’d invited her mom Paula to come live with them—a proposition that had initially caused some stress for her and her husband as they tried to figure out how to swing it financially, although Paula had enough savings to help pitch in, including a few renovations and extra safety features for the bathroom.

Bay Area Older Adults Volunteering for IOA’s Friendship Line Offer Empathetic Listening to Seniors in Need

The voices come from across the Bay Area. Some are regulars, having called before, their trembling voices becoming familiar, their fears and loneliness becoming known. Some are voices reaching out for the first time—their pain and sadness overtaking them, they strike out in the darkness looking for something to hold onto and hoping to find someone who will listen, and who will care.

The Gift of Experience, The Gift of Compassion: Seniors Helping Seniors on the Friendship Line

Issa looked out her window. It was a typical San Francisco December, cold and with a persistent fog, one of those clingy ones that, Issa thought, was the only thing left. When she was younger, this kind of day thrilled her. It was exciting to walk in the fog with Harold, when you could almost imagine yourself alone in the city.

Critical End-of-Life Choices: A Moving Presentation on “Being Mortal” in Morgan Hill

IOA’s Dr. Patrick Arbore at the “Being Mortal” presentation. Photo courtesy Nichole Martin.

Sanctuaries of Hope: Resources for San Francisco’s Aging Homeless Population

In a story that’s sadly all too familiar, Earl goes to his local soup kitchen to eat a warm meal and drink some tea each day at 11am sharp. With gratitude, he tucks into a freshly-cooked dish, a temporary relief from his worries. The rest of his day is often spent searching for a safe place to sleep: there are many others without a place to go and not always enough room for everyone. Earl is one of the many valuable human beings part of the steadily growing aging homeless population in San Francisco.

Walking in the Bay Area to Cultivate Well-Being in Older Adults—Body and Soul

It’s one of the most basic and simple things we can do: putting one foot in front of the other. Taking a step, then another one, and another, rotates the world under our feet, pulls the distance toward us, and brings a destination near. But a destination isn’t always needed. Just the act of walking itself—the motion, the head-clearing movements, the zen-like quality of our most basic motions—has enormous benefits, especially for older adults.

IOA’s Dr. Patrick Arbore Honored with the 2016 Norma Satten Community Service Innovation Award

IOA’s Dr. Patrick Arbore, recipient of the Norma Satten Community Service Innovation Award, with Anne Hinton, former Executive Director of the San Francisco Department of Aging and Adult Services.
Image from SF Healthy Aging[/caption]

Spooktacular Halloween Tips For Older Adults in the Bay Area

Halloween is all about imagination: it’s about hearing a howling rustle of wind and thinking it’s a monster, or seeing some uncut cloth and pondering yourself into a princess. It’s about imagining skeletons dancing around and playing each other like xylophones. It’s the spooky symphony of our mind. But for some reason, we’ve decided that older adults should stop being imaginative. It’s assumed, incorrectly, that the most imaginative holiday of all should be a thing of the past once you reach a certain age.

Disrupt Aging: How Tech Startups Are Championing Home-Based Care for Older Adults

Sometime around 75,000 years ago, a Neanderthal male suffered a broken leg. He was around 40-45, considered relatively old back then. We know his wound healed, a sure sign he was cared for by his fellow Neanderthals—in those days, a man who couldn’t walk would certainly die quickly without help. This first evidence of caring, those wordless millennia ago, is beautiful to think about. Archeologists also found potential evidence of a makeshift leg brace, but that is uncertain. If so, it might be the first piece of technology created solely for an older adult. And, for many, it may have seemed like the last.

The Things We Keep: Gene Wilder and the Refusal to Give in to Alzheimer’s

How do you remember Gene Wilder? Generations have grown up with him as Willy Wonka, mad genius and difficult giant. They remember his fierce outbursts, sly songs, hidden sense of menace, and, ultimately, his heart, in helping a poor child who just wanted to believe. Is that how you remember him? Or is it for his great comedies, those collaborations with Mel Brooks: the shaky sheriff in Blazing Saddles, the scheming schmuck in The Producers, or the not-mad-but-yes-very-mad-scientist in Young Frankenstein? Or, his older movies, like the buddy ones with Richard Pryor where he had the gentleness of a child?