Advocating for our Elderly Parents

The Right Way to Complain

When your loved one is suffering, your first reaction is likely to be outrage. While you may want to scream at a careless aide, pause to consider what's ultimately best for your family member. Controlling your temper may be hard but keeping a civil demeanor will help get your complaints resolved more quickly. Here is the protocol to follow:

1. Talk to the staff responsible for your loved one's care. Don't accuse or attack them, but let them know what the problem is clearly, calmly and respectfully. Intemperate words not only will antagonize the staff but can also be used to "prove" you're a danger. If a worker cites reasons for the lapse, listen to her, make sure you understand and ask how you can work together to prevent the situation from recurring. At home, keep a log of such conversations. If the situation is resolved successfully, thank the staff members involved.

2. If the problem isn't corrected in a timely way, complain in writing to your nursing home administrator. Again, be civil. Describe the issue and your efforts to resolve it clearly, without berating or threatening the staff. Keep copies of your complaints, all responses and any evidence.

3. If you don't get a satisfactory response, request outside mediation from your state ombudsman's office. After an ombudsman is appointed, he or she will talk to you and nursing home personnel to try to resolve your differences amicably.

4. If the problem's still not settled, contact your state Department of Health. Provide a detailed, documented summary of your complaint. The state will then dispatch inspectors to investigate your claims. If you disagree with the findings, you may need to hire an outside attorney and file a lawsuit.

5. Establish an independent family council with other residents' relatives so that you can voice your concerns collectively. The National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform (NCCNHR) offers advice on how to get started.

6. After you complain, be extra-vigilant and document reprisals. If you suspect retaliation, consult an independent advocate. NCCNHR's Web site offers a list.

From The Truth About Nursing Homes

Yesterday Touches Today...Again

I was at work manning the front desk while the receptionist took a break. A call comes in from a Ken Peterson from Hallock.

He had been the principle of the Hallock Elementary School at one time, but now works as a social worker up in my home county. I told him I grew up in St. Vincent, he asked my family, I told him my name had been Short, mentioned my Mom who had worked for the Welfare and he said sure he knew her. He knew the family had 3 daughters. He himself had grown up in Lancaster, and knew Mom had been friends with Faye Lyberg. I told him, yes, they were friends, but more than that, they were cousins. You don't say, he said. Yes, first cousins...I'll be seeing my Mom this week when my sister Betty and I visit her. You tell your Mom hello for me. I sure will...

Different Paths

Harriet stayed at home (mostly). Pat was a career woman (mostly). Of course, things were not that simple, but that's how outsiders would see it looking at the overall picture.

Harriet had a job when she left home thanks in part to her older sister taking her under her wing. She worked for Ma Bell, as a phone operator. She had a short taste of being young, free, and independent. She always said it was a good thing to do, and encouraged all her daughters to at least do the same. She eventually became a homemaker, but always kept busy making money either through growing produce to sell, taking in sewing, selling eggs...or later working for the County as a Homemaker*.

Pat worked for many years in the offices of the J.C. Penney store in downtown Bemidji, Minnesota. The quintessential career woman, she was a bundle of energy with a great sense of humour.

All through their lives, they have been best of friends, not just sisters. Different choices, but their ties as sisters run deep - Mom, the little sister, and Aunt Pat, the big sister...

*A Homemaker was a person who basically travelled all over our very rural northern county to people that were underserved, undereducated, homebound, etc., and taught them about personal finance, how to keep a clean house, and even personal hygiene. I accompanied my Mom sometimes on days off from school during the winter months to see what she did for her work, and witnessed her helping many people, including the disabled and the elderly. She even did simple but much appreciated things like setting ladies' hair to help them look nice. In return, one lady showed her a new type of embroidery that she grew to love and share by making things for the family and giving away. She was very proud of that last job, which helped pay off debts so she and Dad could enjoy their retirement sooner. When they broke up housekeeping in 2001, she still had a few items from her old Homemaker job that I ran across...

Final Wishes

Mom has told me many times she just wants to be let go. I think she feels what happened to Dad was a mistake in retrospect. She wanted to think he could recover, but looking back, he was just maintained, and lingered, and it was not a dignified death. Then again, very few are...

While we can make living wills and discuss our wishes while we're still able to, it's those left behind that have to make the choices for those we love. I hope those that love me, love me enough to let me go...

"When She Loved Me..."

These lyrics by Randy Newman may not have been meant to refer to mothers, but if you think about it, they could be. I listened to them on Prairie Home Companion today, where they were sung among many songs, in honor of Mother's Day. They are especially poignant to me as an older child with an elderly mother whose mind fades in and out...

When somebody loved me
Everything was beautiful
Every hour we spent together lives within my heart
And when she was sad
I was there to dry her tears
And when she was happy
So was I
When she loved me

Through the summer and the fall
We had each other, that was all
Just she and I together
Like it was meant to be

And when she was lonely
I was there to comfort her
And I knew that she loved me

So the years went by
I stayed the same
But she began to drift away
I was left alone
Still I waited for the day
When she'd say I will always love you

Lonely and forgotten,
I'd never thought she'd look my way
And she smiled at me and held me just like she used to do
Like she loved me
When she loved me

When somebody loved me
Everything was beautiful
Every hour we spent together lives within my heart

When she loved me

A Grandson

On Easter this year, I asked my son Daniel if he would come with me to visit my Mom, his grandma. I wasn't sure how he would react. Sometimes the young can be rather cruel. He said sure, he'd love to, and had been thinking about Grandma and about visiting her soon. Knowing how meaning to and doing it are often two different things, I was glad I had asked...and even more glad he had accepted.

We went over Easter Sunday in the afternoon, a beautiful spring day - warm, sunny, trees budding and birds singing. We found Mom with her new SHORT haircut (you can blame me - I asked the beauty shop to do it for ease of care) and it was a shock at first, but then I looked at her with more objective eyes and found it flattering. Mom has a wonderfully shaped face, and a very engaging stare; she always has a slightly amused glint in her eye and around her mouth, and is very ready to share a laugh. There are times when she's just as ready to shed a tear if Dad's memory bubbles to the surface, which happens still all too easily to this day with no reminders from anyone. There is no doubt she will miss him to the day she dies.

We had an amazing visit with her on the patio, everyone enjoying the weather. We talked about memories, but also about what was going on in our lives today. She has a new roommate, a much quieter and pleasant lady, who by coincidence has the same first name of Harriet! Daniel told her all about the work he has been doing, and his continued love of music and what he hopes to do with his passion for it. He has come a long way from the little boy that lived with Grandpa and Grandma while he, Eva, and I got back on our feet again in the mid 1980's. At that time, he would often play alone at their place, making airplanes out of old pieces of wood in Grandpa's 'plunder pile', or climbing up on top of the old chicken coop and gazing around the pastures, trees, and off into the distance, just hanging out. I understood that, having done much the same when I was growing up - solitude in such a place does amazing, inutterable things for your soul...

"Bad in the Kitchen, but good in the bedroom..."

I never met my Great Aunt Maud, Great Uncle Dick's first wife. She may have been a saint for all I know. But knowing my Mom like I do, I've never known her to say something without grounds. Whatever the truth, I thought it was fascinating to learn more about Uncle Dick's earlier life, and here's what Mom recently told us during a visit with her...

Maud, Uncle Dick's first wife, was a dance hall girl and a horrible housekeeper. "You'd come into the kitchen and there wasn't a spot...that wasn't covered by mounds of dirty dishes, pots, and pans!" She was a snob, thinking she was better than others. Mom said that her cousin Rita - one of their 6 daughters - talked back to her mother right and left, didn't let her get away with anything, and Mom rather liked that!

When Mom said "There wasn't a spot...", there was a pregnant pause, which Betty and I took to be the end of the statement, meaning she kept a spotless house, then she suddenly finished the sentence, and I began laughing and laughing, Betty joining in, and then Mom...I explained to Mom I thought you were saying the house was clean...! Evidently, she was known for being quite the opposite. Then Betty said (forgive me Betty, it's too good a line to pass by), "Bad in the Kitchen, but good in the bedroom...!"

Almost Home

I viewed an amazing documentary tonight. It was a window into one retirement home complex, over the course of one year...

Mom in Winter

Tonight, my sister Betty and I visited our mother on her birthday. Once again, Mom talked about getting her driver's license back and driving again. We don't say anything much, but I think about it later. I used to think it was sad. I don't anymore. It just means my Mom has hope, and has plans, and I think that's a good thing...


Happy 84th Birthday, Mom

Not for Sissies

GROWING OLD
by Matthew Arnold

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.

Is it to feel our strength—
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion—none.

It is—last stage of all—
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.