Are there older people in your life who need care? Is it sometimes difficult for you to meet their needs and yours, too? Do you often feel frustrated and overwhelmed by the situation? There are specific practices – let’s call them “spiritual habits of mind” — that can help you with this dilemma.
Practice Seeing Things Differently
To be sure, caring for elders can be difficult. Their shifting moods, attitudes and physical conditions are often challenging for friends, family members and professional caregivers. But there is a way of looking at these challenges that will make them easier to bear. If you learn to see things differently, your relationship with elders will improve, and you will feel more relaxed and loving in their company.
In her book Creating a Rich and Meaningful Life in Long-Term Care (2017), Mary Ann Konarzewski offers a guide designed to make elder care, whether at home or in a facility, less of a burden and more of a blessing. Her main advice is this: learn to approach your relationships with elders as an exercise in self-awareness and acceptance. This will inevitably bring more peace and happiness to your relationships.
Learning to approach elders in this way, especially if they have dementia, is not easy. Konarzewski speaks from experience. She has worked in long-term care facilities for nearly 20 years as a social service worker, activity director, consultant and massage therapist. She describes residents in these facilities who have Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other conditions that can make them disoriented, non-communicative, unresponsive, agitated or depressed.
In explaining what it feels like to be old and disabled, Konarzewski offers us deep insight into the elder experience. She follows up with practical advice on how we can relate to elders in terms of their reality, rather than our own. She has found that, in using this approach consistently, communication and understanding improve dramatically, and everyone’s life, including the lives of caregivers, becomes richer and more meaningful.
Learn to Accept Your Own Aging
What keeps us from relating to elders in ways that are always kind, patient and compassionate? Besides our basic lack of knowledge about aging and disease processes, we let our personal fears of aging and old age get in the way. We project our negative feelings onto them, and they become symbols of everything we hate about getting old.
The cure for this is to practice self-awareness, as well as self-acceptance. We must first make peace with the aging process in our lives, practicing compassion toward our own aging bodies, before we can be unconditionally loving and caring to elders.
Konarzewsky advises that we “learn to surrender to the process of living, aging, and dying” so that we can develop “the courage and wisdom to recognize when to let go” of life as we know it. Although we might do all we can, while we can, to prolong our lives and stay healthy and vital, eventually our bodies will decline, whether we want them to or not. We may know intellectually that youth is impermanent, but we need to work on accepting this fact emotionally in the context of our own lives.
Konarzewki believes that only when we surrender to the aging process will we be able to recognize the gifts that come with it.
One of those gifts is an increasing awareness that we are not our bodies or the things we have acquired. As we get older, we often downsize and move to a smaller home that is easier to care for. Later on, we may downsize further to move into a single furnished room in a nursing home. As we prepare for death, we eventually detach from all worldly things, including the people we have been and the life we have led.
This is the natural progression of things. Acknowledging and accepting it sooner rather than later can bring great comfort and even joy to our lives. Konarzewski suggests that we use this awareness to “embrace life even more and to love each day for whatever it brings,” including the opportunity to assist others who are farther along on the path.
Practice Emotional Care
Konarzewski devotes most of her book to demonstrating what good care, particularly emotional care, looks like. Emotional care involves expressions of respect, empathy, love, and trust that make others feel truly care about and cared for. She offers many suggestions for how to practice this kind of care. Chapters begin with a list of “essential points,” followed by one or more stories that illustrate these points. Some chapters provide “further thoughts” to encourage readers to reflect on the meaning of the stories, along with practical suggestions for creating thoughtful interactions and activities with elders.
Konarzewski invites us to see every interaction as an opportunity to practice loving habits of mind. Her own expressions of kindness and compassion toward elders are evident throughout the book. She is the caregiver we would all want for our grandparents, our parents, and ourselves. Through her stories, which are variously funny, sad, poignant, and inspiring, she teaches us how to become that kind of caregiver, too.
The attitudes and behaviors she suggests we adopt are the same practices taught by many faith traditions: slow down, be mindful, exercise patience, be fully present in the moment, suspend judgement, relinquish expectations about how things are “supposed” to be, look beyond the surface, don’t take things personally, surrender to what is, and love unconditionally.
The author admits that she herself isn’t always successful in practicing these principles, but she always makes the effort. When she does not succeed in connecting positively with someone, she practices patience. She reminds us of a simple truth: sometimes all we can do is listen, be kind, and try again another day. If we cannot relate to someone verbally, we might try another method: touch (holding a hand, kissing a cheek, giving a hug); sound (reading a story aloud, playing music, telling a joke); or nature activities (smelling flowers, feeling the sun, looking at birds, petting a dog). All of these things have emotional resonance, and sharing them is an act of love. They are important, and they matter.
Let Elders Care for You
Although they may be dependent on others for care, elders need opportunities to take care of us, too, and we need to encourage and appreciate their efforts. For example, we can seek their advice, request a hug, ask them to do small favors or chores for us, or see if they will teach us something.
Konarzewski tells a charming story of a woman in a wheelchair who did not speak but kept tapping her on the behind. Finally, the author realized that her belt tie had become undone in back, and the woman wanted to fix it for her. She describes the scene: “As her arthritic shaky fingers fumbled against my rump, I exercised patience for what seemed an interminably long time. When she finally finished she looked so pleased!” In telling that story, Konarzewski reminds us that helping others, even in small ways, gives us a sense of purpose, and we all need a sense of purpose, regardless of age or ability level.
Keep the Big Picture in Mind
Anyone who works with people who are old, disabled or dying is often asked, “How do you do it? Isn’t it depressing?” Konarzewski responds in a way that normalizes frailty and impermanence as part of the human condition: “The truth is we are all dying. From the moment we are born, we begin to die, and like the elders I have worked with, we are all just visitors passing through, be it through skilled nursing or life.”
When we embrace our shared humanness, we can feel pleasure in offering care to others. A small act of giving, including the choice to respond kindly when the other person is angry, anxious or afraid, will make everyone’s life a little better. These are the moments that create a truly “rich and meaningful life” for elders and caregivers alike.
Written by: Ruth Ray Karpen
Ruth Ray Karpen is a retired English professor who now works as a freelance researcher and writer. She has published many books and articles on aging and old age, life story writing, and retirement. She also volunteers for a local animal shelter. In our series on Heart and Soul, she explores how later life, including the end of life, offers unique opportunities for emotional and spiritual growth.
On behalf of Smart Strategies for Successful Living, our sincerest appreciation goes to Ruth Ray Karpen for her contribution to the heart and soul of living and aging.