Betrayal is dependent on your expectation. If you don’t have high hopes for someone, you won’t feel betrayed. If you go into business with a man named “Jimmy Con-Artist,” you might not be surprised if you get swindled. But when you actually do have expectations of or trust in someone, like a professional caregiver, if they engage in cruel and harmful betrayal like financial abuse, it cuts deep.
“There are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” This earnest prediction by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter could feel constricting—or we could learn to take it in stride. We are all aging simultaneously, of course: Each day, we grow one day older together. But a disproportionate segment of our population is aging toward retirement and toward expanded needs for home care and other specialty resources. We know this to be true, and we can adapt and prepare ourselves as we are called to shift our roles, responsibilities, and generosity.
We all have one special home we live in our entire lives: our bodies. When older adults are working against arthritis and other challenges to their mobility, it’s not just their physical fitness that backslides—they’re also likely to lose touch and feel disconnected from their bodies. When we’re not feeling actively in touch with those living homes, we feel displaced, and other aspects of our lives can get out of balance, too.
Where do we go when our mind betrays us and when the person that we have been our whole lives gets lost in the recesses of our brain? It’s a question with deep and often terrible philosophical, moral, and emotional implications, and the lack of an answer is one of the crueler parts of dementia and Alzheimer’s for a sufferer’s loved ones. But there is also a more tangible, though no-less-difficult, question: Where should they go?
Imagine that you meet two individuals today at a senior center. Each offers to help you identify some important resources that will make your life better. Both of these people identify themselves as volunteers for nonprofit advocacy organizations. They tell you that, as an older adult, you are eligible for some generous support through programs that you had no idea even existed. Both of these kind individuals express a genuine wish to help you gain access to these benefits, so your life can turn around and you can start living more comfortably.
Claire’s 84-year-old mother, Eve, suffered several small strokes and a few falls in the two years after her husband passed away. While Eve was still living independently in the family home, Claire was constantly checking up on her and was continually plagued with worry that something would happen to her mother while she was home alone. She’d bought her a lifeline, a shower rail, and an adjustable bed to make living at home safer for her, but after Eve’s third fall landed her in the hospital with a broken hip, Claire knew something had to change.
For almost a decade, Deanna was “going to write a memoir.” For almost a decade, she just didn’t really know where or how to start. She collected all kind of photos and dates and evidence of life memories over those long years, but breaking into the actual writing was intimidating, so, again and again, she’d start and quickly stop in one notebook or the next.
When Rose Mary’s father could no longer take care of himself following a major heart attack, she was faced with a very tough decision. She could either help him move home or to an assisted living community, an idea that he firmly resisted, or become his full-time caregiver so that he could stay in the house he’d called home for more than 60 years.
“We can learn so much about the people around us—even about the people you already know—just by taking the time to have a conversation. And if you pay just a little attention, you’ll find wisdom and poetry in their words … Most people love to be listened to because it tells them how much their lives matter,” says Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, in a short video that introduces its purpose.
Phone: (415) 750 – 4111 | Fax: (415) 750 – 5338
Marin County | San Mateo County | Santa Clara County | Alameda County | Contra Costa County | San Bernardino & Riverside Counties