Fragile -

  From vantage points of rockers, chairs, and benches residents and guests in senior communities can breathe fresh air in South Florida or countless other alternate living accommodations across the country.   Onlookers become immune to emergency vehicles; when faced with emergency they are grateful to the medic team for transfer to the nearest medical center.

Emergencies know no boundaries.  Responses come at the most inopportune time - while caregivers are packing for a short or long-awaited trip, during traditional holiday dinners, dressing for graduation or one week after return from a parent who now exhibits different behavior.   

Last week's phone call to my mother's  line brought comfort with description of a grandson's visit, reminiscing through family albums.  This week, with stattaco emails sharing my mother's emergency hospital stay, dismantling of her apartment, and decision making for another stop on her journey, I know not to call.  I can only hope that someone will read the Mother's Day message I posted a few days ago as the card shop lacked the words to express the gratitutde for every opportunity I had been given.

Distance, early retirement, and maintenance of my home that has been on and off the market for four years have fostered challenges in long-distance caregiving.   I am grateful for my siblings' devotion the past 18 years and do what I can in communicating through reminiscing with my mother.  Everyone has a talent in the caregiving pyramid.  Please take a minute to comment and share your long distance or dominant caregiving experience.

Evasive talk about emotion

Acknowledging my co-authoring a gerontology text entitled Conversations: Effective Communication with the Elderly, my dear friend in her early 80s sent me this article.  http:/www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/opinion/08brooks.html

How many times do families, like mine, gather and talk about material things rather than about emotion?  My siblings are 65, 75, and 75 - not a typo.  Talk is centered around accessories in the house, golf games, travel, grandchildren, food, the world situation.  Doctors, but not chronic illness.   Cars but not individual financial challenges.  Healthcare but not about Medicare supplements, long-term care insurance - reasons people are working well into their 70s if given an opportunity.   My father, a pharmacist, worked until he was 83, because he wanted to serve the public.

Note in David Brooks' article the range of deep talents which span reason and emotion and make hash of narrower definitions of IQs, degrees, and professional skills.  Brooks cites "Limerence: This isn't a talent as a much as a motivation."  And so some siblings must delay a mortgage payment in order to purchase airfare to respond to crisis, a last opportunity to see a loved one. 

What common threads of understanding or lack of understanding have you witnessed as primary caregiver or a long-distance caregiver trying to keep your head above water while your feelings are being questioned?