Giving Thanks for Being a Caregiver

Much of the adjustment that goes into being a caregiver for your aging parent goes into dealing with the stress and the emotional drain that role can bring. In addition to the issues of how to care for her in the best possible way, there are the emotions of anger when programs don’t work right or when the facility, she is in has problems. There is resentment at other siblings or even at your aging parent because of the demands this job has on you personally.

There are other adjustments that are a huge drain on you emotionally. Balancing work, home and private life with the demands on your time being a caregiver requires is a juggling act that will involve as many “dropped balls” as successes before you ever get it right. And about the time you do get a good balance, the demands of your elderly parent might change, and you are again pulled back into that stressful situation.

So, you have to think about ways you can offset the demands on you and try to take some time for you and for your family. These are all difficult emotions which may be why it takes a real adult to be a caregiver for an elderly person. But there is one emotion you may wish to foster and dwell on as much as you can to offset the worry, the anxiety, the anger and the resentment. That is the emotion of thankfulness.

Now it may seem impossible to even ponder how thankfulness could become part of your emotional reaction to this demanding situation you find yourself in. But if you can find ways to be thankful that you are the caregiver for your parent, that positive emotion can do wonders to drive out those negative emotions in your heart. And when you think about it, there are quite a few great things you can be thankful for BECAUSE you are the primary caregiver for your aging parent. Some of those are…

·  You are able to give back a bit of the sacrifice they made to raise you. The amount of time and money and emotional effort your parents used upon you as a child is something that can never be repaid. But you are giving a little bit back in caring for them when they are old to say, “Thank you for raising me and never giving up on me. And now I am not going to give up on you.”

·  There would be anxiety if you were not here. If you were far away in another state, you would be a basket case if you didn’t know your mom or dad’s medical condition. So by being close, you can get the facts quickly and get them right which cuts down on all of those “what if” bad dreams about your mom and dad.

·  You always know what’s going on. There are a lot of “false alarms” with an elderly person. They need someone that can say, “It’s all right. It’s under control” to them. That someone is you.

·  You are needed and you are important to your elderly mom or dad. If ever there was a time when you felt needed not just every so often but every day and every hour of the day, it is when you are there to help your parents through this tough time of their lives.

·  Celebrate those little times of laughter and joy. Celebrate when you enjoy a movie together or laugh at those “insider” family jokes that always bring a smile. Those times will be precious to you when your parent go on to their reward someday.

There is something deep inside us that feels a sense of completion when we are able to stay with someone we love through a very tough time. Your love for your parent and between you and her will deepen and grow stronger in a way that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

 And even after your parent goes on to their eternal reward, you will be able to look back on those months when you gave all you could to make those final months of her life happy and peaceful and you will be able to say, “I did the right thing.” And that is one feeling that is irreplaceable and something you will be able to be thankful for forever.

 

Cut Your Caregiver Some Slack

In a couple of days, I will give a workshop on “Care for the Caregiver”. This is an important workshop as it addresses how to care for seniors who are caring for others without pay.

A close family member or friend who takes the role of “caregiver” cares for most seniors in need of care. The job description of a caregiver is pretty wide and can include anything from buying your groceries to making sure your Medical paperwork is all correct, to do your taxes, to cleaning your apartment. In fact, there really is no list of jobs that makes a resume of a good caregiver except for the one job of doing “anything you need her to do.”

Caregiving is an unpaid position. Your caregiver does what she/he does for one reason–to take care of you. If you can step back and look at it objectively, that’s a pretty amazing job, especially because as age advances, the demands on your caregiver can get more and more stressful.

While it’s not something we talk about, some senior citizens have a reputation for being demanding. Part of this reputation is the many challenges we face just when we are least able to handle them. Medical problems, fatigue and depression can be so debilitating that we are less able to tackle the issues of life just when they really need to be tackled.

The most common caregivers are one of your children who lives closest to you, or a partner or spouse. Since this important person is a family member, it’s easy to “unload” on them when you don’t feel good, when you are confused, when you feel angry, or when you need something done.

It’s easy to get impatient with them when something needs attention and they are not there to attend to it. It is also easy to want your caregiver to stay with you and never go home. This may be because you get lonely or you wouldn’t have to worry about something coming up that needs attention.

We need to have a reality check with each other about who your caregiver can be to you and what they cannot be. Your caregiver is not (a) a live-in maid, (b) your personal slave, (c) responsible for everything wrong in your life or (d) a person who lives only for your needs. If this wonderful person is one of your children, he or she may have a family and a job. You cannot expect them to drop those things to attend to you only. By being a little realistic, you are on the right track to having the right relationship with your caregiver.

If you looked at the role of a caregiver through the eyes of that person who cares for you, they have a lot of stress in their lives. Your caregiver knows you want her to stay with you all the time. He/she knows you are angry about your situation and about your limited resources and about things that don’t work the way they should. The weight of your impatience and anger weighs heavily on her.

There is a genuine problem known as caregiver burnout. People who follow such things have documented many cases where a caregiver has a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with the demands of an ageing parent and their own families and jobs. You don’t want that to happen to your caregiver. So, cut your caregiver some slack.

The Greatest Loss of Them All

Perhaps the hardest task you will ever be faced with is to help one of your parents cope with the loss of her spouse.  Naturally, this is going to be a traumatic time for the whole family because as much as mom lost her husband and the father of her children, you have lost your daddy and you have grief yourself.  So how do you help your mom and grandma to your kids get through this very difficult transition?

It will be a time when you will need the understanding and support of your spouse and kids as well.  And just as the grief you are coping with, yourself and in your now widowed mother is difficult, you also have to be strong and brave for your children as well. 

This is the purpose of the funeral because, through the good words of the minister, those not as close to the family feel closure that this good life has gone on to his reward.  If your dad was ill and going through a lot of discomforts, there is often a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering.  And if the family is strong in religious faith, that assurance of the afterlife is a source of comfort as well. 

Only you will be able to gauge how much support or comfort your widowed mother needs in the days just after the passing.  It’s important to remember that grief surfaces in strange ways.  Many times, the real deep grief does not surface at the funeral or even in the days just after as family stays around to be close and go through group processing of the loss of a loved one.

It’s when the family goes home and the routine of daily life sets in that you should plan to be very accessible to your parents  That is when the emotions of grief will surface in the quiet and privacy of the home.  It might be advisable in this kind of situation that you live with the grieving parent for a period of a week or two to help with the transition.

Another thing about grief is that it is selfish.  While we put a noble face on it and say we are grieving “for” the lost one, the truth is the grief is really for the one who remains because it is, she who has to learn to go through life’s routines without that spouse.  By being present during mealtime and those little moments of the day, you can “talk through” the different times when your widowed parent remembers that the dearly departed was part of this part of life.

There will be a lot of rebuilding during those first months of being alone.  So you as the caregiver can help that transition by not letting the times of loneliness be so long between visits.  Obviously, your parent will eventually have to learn to get through the rituals of life alone.  But be there for her so that transition is not so jarring.

But even if your parents were stoic at the funeral and only shows a happy face to the grandkids, there will come a time when she has to cry.  Be there for her.  Don’t try to come up with any “comforting words.”  Just being present, maybe doing the dishes or pouring each of you a glass of wine can be the biggest comfort you can provide.

Finally, talk about the dearly departed.  Ministers know the value of talking about the fun, interesting and wonderful things about the dearly departed.  It is a way of reminding ourselves that he didn’t really go away.  The memory of him will be here forever in your hearts.  So take some evenings and sit down with that box of family photos and go through them with the widowed parent and laugh about the different events of your family history when you were just a little squirt and mom and dad were young and good looking kids themselves.

The joy of these times will be tremendously healing for the grieving senior citizen and for you too.  But by going through grief, healing, closure and moving on together, you bond with your parent and lay the groundwork for the important caregiving challenges you and she will face together in the months and years to come.  But you will face them and you will conquer them because you are going to do it together.

The Caregiver’s Emotions

There is a balance between the jobs of a caregiver and the feelings of a caregiver.  If you can detach yourself from the many emotions you feel when you have taken on this hard job, many of the “tasks” are fairly routine.  Whether it’s doing your mom's and dad’s laundry or grocery shopping or paying the bills or filling out the Medicare paperwork, much of the “stuff” of being a caregiver is pretty humdrum.

But just doing the chores of taking care of your ageing parent’s physical needs is not all there is to be a caregiver.  If that was all there was to it, you could hire someone to handle that.  No, the real challenge of being a good caregiver for your elderly parent is the emotional support you give to them as they struggle with a tough part of their life.

This is particularly true if you are helping your mom or dad through the trials of a terminal illness.  Even if they are good at putting up a brave front for the grandkids and the people at church, your mom or dad experienced a gamut of feelings if the end of their lives is directly ahead due to that illness. 

The caregiver’s emotions at helping your parents deal with this dire realization are tremendously complex.  You have your personal emotions that are a preliminary form of grief.  That is why at the funeral of a senior citizen who passed away from a lingering disease, the caregiver doesn’t seem to be grieving as much as others.  The truth is, the caregiver gets most of her grieving out of the way while the senior is still here and they work together to cope with the decline and passing as best they can.  So by the funeral, the caregiver is usually “all grieved out.”

But your emotions about how you feel about your loved one and about this job of taking care of mom or dad in their final months or years will have a direct effect on how you go about the job of taking care of your mom or dad and how you feel about that job as well.  Probably the two emotions most commonly associated with taking care of an elderly person in decline is pity and compassion.

Pity is not really a good summary of the feelings you have about taking care of your elderly parent or parents.  You don’t really “feel sorry for them” the same way you might feel toward a hurt puppy or a baby that cries.  Pity is not an action emotion.  The action emotion that doesn’t just look at the suffering or unhappiness of the parent and say, “that’s a shame” is compassion.  Compassion sees a need in the elderly parent and doesn’t just feel bad about it.  Compassion says, “There’s a need. What can I do about it?”  Compassion is the genuine emotion of a caregiver.

Can you influence whether you will react with pity or compassion to your elderly parent?  Yes, and how you manage your emotions will be a big factor in how successful you are as a caregiver.   There are three key tips you should keep in mind constantly to help you manage not only your emotions but how you react to problems that come up in your caregiving.  They are…

§  Focus on the one you are caring for, not on yourself.  Focusing on yourself breeds self-pity and resentment.  Focusing on them builds bonding and affection for your mom or dad.

§  Focus on the solution to the problem, not its effects.  A good doctor doesn’t cure symptoms, he cures the disease.  Don’t dwell on how bad something is but on what can be done to eliminate the problem entirely.

§  Focus on creating joy and happiness, not grief and sadness.  Look for the good in a day.  Look for joyful moments, times when you and your elderly parent can laugh, enjoy a meal or a good movie and use this time for fellowship and being together.  That is the real joy of being a caregiver and one only you will enjoy in its fullest.

If you use these three “marching orders” of being a caregiver, your emotions will get in line and you will function out of compassion and not pity.  Then your emotions will become powerful aids in your goals to help your elderly parent.

Caring for the Caregiver

The relationship between an elderly person and his or her caregiver is complex and intense sometimes.  But that relationship does not exist in a vacuum.  There are a lot of people affected by what is going on when that caregiver goes to that senior citizen's apartment and give to him or her that one on one attention that is so necessary. 

For one thing, the caregiver’s friends, family and coworkers are affected.  Becoming the primary person responsible for the care and well being of a senior citizen is a peculiar job because it is tremendously demanding and completely unpaid.  Caregivers are for the most part children or close relatives of the senior citizen being cared for and they have jobs, families and a full life outside of the time they put in taking care of their parents or parents.

So when that responsibility falls to you, those around you also have to give a little to help you accomplish that goal.  But for those who are related to a caregiver, there is a demand for you as well.  If mom has to go over to Grandpa’s apartment every night for two or three hours, that means mom isn’t home helping you with your homework, making supper or just being available if her little girl needs someone to talk to.

If dad is gone thirty or forty hours a week taking care of Grandpa, that is time he is not home providing guidance for his kids, fixing the garbage disposal or making those corny but fun jokes the kids groan about but love.  Similarly, friends and the working world of a caregiver are also asked to give up a little or a lot of the mind, the emotions and the time of that caregiver so he or she can go and care for that elderly parent and divert that energy and time in that direction.

For those of us who have a caregiver in our family or part of our social or work circle, in addition to the sacrifices, you can become concerned for your friend or loved one because of the demands of caring for a senior citizen.  It’s a job that is taxing to even the strongest adult and one that takes a lot out of your friend or family member.  Caregiver burn out is a common syndrome and it doesn’t just affect the caregiver.  If your parent, spouse, coworker or friend undergoes a break down from the stress of caring for her mom or dad, that will have an impact on everyone.

So there is a compelling need for all of us associated with a caregiver to learn to care for that caregiver to help her and support her in what she is doing. Some specific things you can do are…

§  Let them know you believe in what they are doing.  Caregivers often feel very alone and guilty that they are not attending to family and other relationships.  By letting her know you are 100% behind what she is doing and that you are doing fine, that guilt is removed which makes her know she can make it.

§  Let her know she is missed. 

§  Pick up the slack.  Each evening if dad and the kids can pick up the house, then mom can get some sleep and know that you are taking care of business at home so she doesn’t have to worry about it.

§  Let mom sleep in.  Maybe even bring her breakfast in bed every so often.

§  Pitch in.  Go over and help grandma out yourself so it’s not all on mom.

§  An unexpected surprise. Every so often do something to surprise and totally delight mom and give her a fun break from her worries of caregiving.  A movie out or a limo ride around town can go a long way for a weary caregiver.

If the spouse, the children and friends and associates of the coworker can keep and eye on her to look out for those signs of burn out, it may be our responsibility to jump in and give her some support before everything falls apart.  By caring for the caregiver, she is better able to give attention to that senior citizen she is caring for.  So in a way we are all becoming part of the effort to give the caregiver’s mom or dad the best care possible.  And that is what community is all about.