Well, Thanksgiving and Christmas Part 1 (of 4) is behind us. Our family rarely has a chance to gather everyone together and this year's festivities will long be remembered as the Thanksgiving of 12 people, six dogs, the first grandchild and Granny. Ah, eldercare at the holidays....
Our grandmother
has long been a handful. This year
alone, she was asked to leave her assisted living complex, fired her private
duty company (AGAIN), moved into senior housing and finally met a wonderful
professional caregiver who helps her daily.
She refuses to make use of her facility's social outreach, so she's
often lonely. Knowing that, our aunt
brought her to Thanksgiving with the mass of visitors descending on mom and
dad's home. Plus, we were all excited to
get to spend time with her and that she could enjoy her great-grandson. At 90 years old, she's losing her sight, is
very fragile and has a hard time walking.
With so much commotion in the house, we all were very conscious to make
sure that no one (or dog) tripped her or got in her way. We made sure to include her in conversations
and let her judge what she was capable of doing. From what we knew, everyone had a great
time. There was no drama and even the
dogs got along with each other as well as the toddler chasing them around.
Little did we
know a day later that she would lead an extended-family vent session. On the three hour drive back home, she spent
the entire time saying how there were too many people, too many dogs and in
general nothing was right. Our aunt
finally had it and told her that her negativity was getting to her. Granny interpreted this as our aunt having a
complete physical breakdown (not the case).
This led to much angst, yelling and phone calls from Granny to anyone
who would listen. All of the sudden, our
wonderful Thanksgiving turned into the trigger that had people from four
different states up in arms resulting in bruised feelings and resentments. Unfortunately, this situation probably sounds
very familiar to many families out there.
We may be luckier than some as we made it through Thanksgiving.
I'm very
fortunate that I'm removed enough from the situation to help offer both an ear
to listen as well as a bit of perspective.
In our situation, everyone wants to help, but we're all reacting to the
facts as we know them. From our vantage
point, we're doing everything we can to offer our support to Granny and make
sure that she has everything that she needs to age safely in place. We also have finally come to the realization
that no matter how much we do, SHE is in control of her well-being. For example, we know she is lonely, so we
made sure to find a facility that has social programs. We even encouraged her professional caregiver
to bring her down to the common areas.
But, she refuses to use the resources as her disposal and resists any
attempts to meet new friends or take part in activities.
Our extended family members are reacting to the information that they have. Namely that she feels that we are trying to ignore her, don't respect the challenges that she is going through and that she's unhappy. Needless to say, this makes us defensive. What does all this have in common? Lack of communication. Our family uses Making Care Easier (MCE), but had not invited our extended family members to join our care team--big mistake. If we had, everyone would know what has been done in the past to deal with Granny's problems. Not only that, but they would understand the tremendous amount of work our aunt puts in and how we help from afar. We started MCE to help families caring for elderly parents and little did we know how much it could help our own family as well.
Now that even the leftovers are gone and everyone's back at their respective homes, we're making a better effort to communicate with everyone Granny relies on. We love and respect her and want to make sure that everyone has all the CORRECT information about her care. We don't want another repeat of Thanksgiving's aftermath. After all, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"….
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