The Challenges of Caring for Our Aging Parents

At a recent workshop, one of the participants talked about the challenges of caring for her aging parents. This touched my heart, as I spent ten years supporting one or both of my parents in a longterm care facility.

There are, indeed, huge challenges that face us as our parents age. We help them downsize as they move to a smaller home, provide more assistance with daily tasks, accompany them to medical appointments, and become alert to changes in their mental, emotional and physical health. Sometimes it feels like a huge burden. But other times, it feels like an opportunity to share a part of our parents' life in a new way.

It might help from time to time, to try to think of this time as a gift to our parents, in thanks for all that they did for us throughout our life. It is also a gift from then to us, a gift of a little more time, and an opportunity to share moments that our siblings may not be able to enjoy.

Donna Jackel writes about caring for her father in
One Daughter's Caregiving Regrets.

"I had no regrets over the life-altering decisions I'd made: Uprooting my dad had been a necessity. We had found him an excellent medical team; Max chose his senior citizen community where the residents looked “happy and relaxed.”

To my surprise, the words not spoken and simple deeds left undone were what filled me with remorse."

But she goes on to say: "Regrets, I have a few, but I also have immense satisfaction of knowing I made my dad’s last years good ones. . . .
And to all you past, present and future caregivers, I say: Don’t judge yourself too harshly.

“It’s useful for people to think carefully about what happened,” says [Brian]Carpenter. “[But] it’s water under the bridge and you can’t change things. Use your regrets as a chance to examine your values, your priorities, and put them into action moving forward.”

It's an article worth reading.

 

New Workshops March 8 and April 5

Create a personal life plan for your retirement.

 

Retire to the Life You Design^© guides you through a personal process to help you to design your retirement with a blend of activities that keeps you physically active, mentally challenged, emotionally recharged, and socially engaged.

Through our process and tools, you begin to create a plan to retire to the life that you design yourself, a retirement unique to you.

The program will equip you with tools, models, information and resources to help you continue your exploration and discovery after the workshop ends.

Barbara Cavers, is a consultant with over forty years experience as a teacher, administrator and consultant. She is an accomplished facilitator and presenter, and has worked with education, health, and social services organizations in strategic planning, project management and community development.

Saturday, March 8, 2014  OR Saturday, April 5, 2014  

from 9:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Pemmican Lodge (102 5 Ave S.)

Cost $97.00 includes a:55-page workbook and  the Retirement Dimensions™ tool

For further information or to register, contact:

Barbara Cavers

bcavers@la.shockware.com

403-553-2973

 

The Big Boomer Split

A new article on EverythingZoomer.com suggests that there is a real difference between boomers born at the beginning of the baby boom in the late 1940s and those born towards the end of the boom in the mid 60s.

With the youngest boomers about to turn 50 and the oldest coming up to 70, it was inevitable that those at either end of the boomer spectrum would be recognized as being very different from each other. Sure, 70 may be the new 50. But it’s still a lot closer to 80 than to 40. And 80 is still undeniably old. That’s probably why the youngest boomers want to opt out of what has become known, inaccurately, as “the boomer generation.”

Understandably, the youngest boomers don’t want to be linked with anyone undeniably old. But there’s also a huge difference in what early and late boomers experienced growing up. “There’s definitely a gap between the two halves of the baby boom,” declared the New York Times this week, in an article headlined I May Be 50, but Don’t Call Me a Boomer, “and those significant differences define us.”

The differences depend on which of three decades you were born in. The baby boom in Canada extends from 1946 to 1965, according to StatsCan. “For a wide-ranging set of attitudes and cultural references, it matters whether you were a child in the 1940s and ’50s, or in the 1960s and ’70s,” reported the Times. The earliest boomers didn’t have birth control pills or Beatles when they entered their teens. Later boomers were post-protesting, post-feminism and well into sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in their teens.

There’s also another difference: a huge advantage for younger boomers. While they may resent the “old hippies,” those born near the end of the boom are enjoying the full benefits of the research and policies that came about because of the burgeoning demographic. The voluntary deferral of the Old Age Security pension, for example, was offered last summer to people turning 65 after July 1, 2013. The earliest boomers who were turning 65 in 2011 missed out on this option that could increase the pension by up to 36 percent at age 70.
Also, by the time those born in 1965 reach the age of 70, in 2035, there’s a good chance that continued research and understanding of the brain will be able to postpone, control or even eliminate dementia. Already there’s information available about lowering risks of Alzheimer’s that wasn’t available just a few years ago. “The boomer population is big enough that we have this information in place so younger boomers can take advantage of it,” says Dr. Tiffany Chow, behavioural neurologist at Baycrest.

Copyright 2014 ZoomerMedia Limited

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