by External Article | Feb 28, 2023 | Caring for a Romantic Partner, Silent generation |
In her mid-70s, Ida began showing signs of Alzheimer’s. Her decline was gradual. She experienced the usual memory loss and attendant confusion, but life went on pretty much as before. Then one day, Henry came home to find Ida speaking to a framed photograph on the... 
by External Article | Jan 8, 2023 | 24/7 Caregiving, Art, Caring for a Parent, Generation X, Long Distance Caregiving, Short Term Caregiving |
In March 2020, Lori traveled to Florida to help Audrey move into an assisted living facility, a plan that was immediately upended with the arrival of nationwide lockdowns. In the next three months, Lori lived with Audrey in her apartment, sleeping in the same bed with... 
by External Article | Nov 2, 2022 | Caring for a Grandparent, Generation Z, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation |
When Nonna’s memory fails her, she returns to familiar gestures. On a weekend afternoon in winter 2021, she offers me a piece of hard licorice candy, piles of which sit dusty in a crystal dish on her coffee table. She suggests she put on a pot of espresso. Then, she... 
by External Article | Oct 11, 2022 | 24/7 Caregiving, Caring for a Grandparent, Caring for a Parent, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation |
“My mom was taking care of her mom, who had Alzheimer’s, [and] not telling anybody how hard it was or that she needed help, or that it was completely stressing her out,” Revere says. “And then it became about me coming home to be in a house... 
by External Article | Jun 22, 2022 | Caring for a Client, For Friends & Family |
“I hope you’ll still laugh at my jokes when I have dementia,” I said to my husband Ryan on an evening walk not long after my thirty-fourth birthday. It was the first time I had tried out my new resolution to stop saying “if I get dementia” and to start referring to... 
by External Article | Jun 21, 2022 | Caring for a Parent |
At first, my mother, the poet Anne Atik, had seemed just ordinarily confused. Then, very gradually, the confusion took on a pathological aspect. She awoke in the middle of the night thinking it was morning. On what turned out to be her last Eurostar journey, she... 
by External Article | Jun 11, 2022 | Caring for a Parent, Housing, Long Distance Caregiving |
The woman is my mother, who is 81 and losing her memory, the past dissolving each day like so many tablets dropped into water and turning to fizz. Do you know who they are? she says, speaking to me, because she realizes I’m there in the doorway. I’m visiting for a... 
by External Article | Nov 4, 2021 | Care Work Library, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
As we know from classical traditions of mnemonic loci, like the memory palace, memory is often tied to place. When certain places fade from one’s imaginable and navigable universe, one’s mnemonic geography shifts, too. Your internal compass and your mental map will... 
by External Article | May 14, 2021 | Caring for a Romantic Partner, Generation X, Long Term Caregiving |
We are four years into his dementia. The professionals call this slow descent The journey, but I say that Holding someone’s hand while they drown gets closer to the daily truth of it. I say Honey out of habit now, and every time I remember the sweet weight that word... 
by External Article | Feb 19, 2021 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Client, Caring for a Grandparent, Caring for a Parent, For Professional Caregivers, Housing |
In other care facilities and in hospitals, too, “wanderers” with dementia are believed to have spread the virus and caused outbreaks — but what are administrators to do? They can’t just lock people up. “Stay in your room,” the nursing aides tell Mr. Williams. But he... 
by External Article | Jan 20, 2021 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Finding Meaning |
When the call came to say my mother had died, I was working on a jigsaw of Joan Miró’s painting The Tilled Field (1923-24). Like many others, I turned to jigsaws at the start of the pandemic as a way to manage stress, and symbolically reimpose order on a chaotic... 
by External Article | Dec 9, 2020 | 24/7 Caregiving, Baby Boom Generation, Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
Like her mother, who had worked as a nurse in a factory, my mother found her calling in caring for others. Between raising my sisters and me, she taught special education, ran a women’s crisis hotline, volunteered at the state prison to teach reading, worked at the... 
by External Article | Nov 9, 2020 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Housing |
On September 16, my father died. He lived the last six months of his life entirely cut off from his family and friends. That’s because he was one of the 1.3 million people living in nursing homes across the country. He didn’t have Covid-19, but even though the disease... 
by External Article | Oct 14, 2020 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Silent generation |
“In my family, voting was the highest honor of citizenship,” his daughter, Judith Kozlowski, said. “You owed it to your country to vote; that was always the message.” It remains important to Mr. Kozlowski, now a resident of an independent living facility in Chevy... 
by External Article | Sep 25, 2020 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Generation X, Long Distance Caregiving, Long Term Caregiving |
My father’s father talked to everyone, including the figurines on the sideboard, and he sometimes saw the ships he’d worked on as chief engineer sail across the field behind our neighbour’s house. My mother’s mother stopped speaking, also to her husband, who she... 
by External Article | Aug 26, 2020 | Care Work Library, Caregiver News, Sandwich Generation |
Things were hard enough for Jennifer Galluzzo before the pandemic hit. Four years ago, the full-time working mother of three became a full-fledged member of the “sandwich generation” when her father-in-law joined their household in Brewster, N.Y. But things got harder... 
by External Article | Jun 23, 2020 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation |
I was 27 when I left my first full-time job to care for my mother when she was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2013. So many millennials are still recovering from the recession of 2008 and have already struggled with finding a job, establishing credit, or... 
by External Article | May 11, 2020 | Care Work Library, Housing, Long Term Caregiving |
Between 2002 and 2013, the number of Canadian seniors living with dementia increased by 83 percent, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. In 2016, the Alzheimer Society of Canada estimated that more than half a million Canadians were living with... 
by External Article | Feb 11, 2020 | Art, Care Work Library |
While making Breathers, a series of photographs of looming Pacific Northwest trees as metaphors for this fading, I was inspired to look at how other photographers approach the disease. The following artists use photography to understand, process, and cope with their... 
by Caroline H. Sheppard, MSW | Feb 4, 2020 | Caring for a Parent |
In 1997, I took a two-year leave of absence from my position as a School Social Worker. This decision was driven, not by my desire to leave, but by a consideration for my spouse, who wanted to move near his family in Florida. In my mind, this move was going to be... 
by Guest Author | Jan 30, 2020 | Caring for a Grandparent, Caring for a Parent, Finding Caregiver Support, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation |
The tradition of keeping everything in the family is an amiable labor of love, but it is making our Spanish speaking caregivers In America ill. Familism is affecting our Latinx caregiver’s mental and physical health negatively. “ Familism refers to the value of the... 
by Guest Author | Jan 28, 2020 | Caring for a Parent, Poetry |
Dementia is like a thief, Victims are robbed, that is true Like a ship that strikes the reef, And steals captain and the crew. You may not remember me, but I still remember you! Dementia is like a thorn, Florists know its painful stab While a rose stem leaves me torn,... 
by External Article | Dec 18, 2019 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Grandparent, Finding Meaning, Grief, Health & Fitness, Millennial Generation, Occasional Caregiving |
Sometimes it’s just one thing after another, for months and then years. How do you make it through? In October, I lost my grandma. She had parkinson’s and dementia and had slowly been deteriorating for the last five to seven years. When she passed, I was... 
by External Article | Nov 22, 2019 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Grandparent, Caring for a Parent, Long Term Caregiving |
It’s hard to change roles after living a certain way for decades. Dementia — and aging in general — forces our roles with certain family members to undergo dramatic changes. Producer B.A. Parker started recording her calls with her father because she... 
by External Article | Oct 29, 2019 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent |
I’m looking after my 90-year old mum who has some dementia. My problem is her nasty attitude. I’m single and have to work full-time, but I visit mum twice a week and call her a couple of times nearly every day. I try taking her out to new places and for dinner, but... 
by Guest Author | Oct 1, 2019 | Poetry |
Some deaths Are like the slamming of a door. Sudden. Complete. You are either On one side of the door, Or the other, With no contact between. But dementia isn’t like that. It is simultaneously more gentle, And more cruel. Not one, complete, total, goodbye. Instead... 
by External Article | Sep 26, 2019 | Art, Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Finances, Finding Caregiver Support, Generation X |
When Ted Rall’s mother started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, it meant that Rall, who is an only child, had to navigate nursing homes and crushing medical bills without the help of siblings. “It’s incredibly isolating,” he said. For the first time in his... 
by External Article | Aug 29, 2019 | Care Work Library, Finances, Long Term Caregiving, Millennial Generation, Working Family Caregivers |
Aisha Adkins would rather have her own place, instead of living with her parents. She would also like a job, a car, a master’s degree and savings. But at 35, a decade after graduating from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro with a specialty in social services,... 
by External Article | Aug 2, 2019 | Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Housing |
Why didn’t my parents move in with me when they needed help? I didn’t invite them and they wouldn’t have wanted to come. Why not? Well, first, no one could accuse me of having the qualities that make a good carer. On the occasions when my dad has come to stay with us... 
by External Article | Jul 15, 2019 | Baby Boom Generation, Care Work Library, Caring for a Parent, Finances, Planning, Sandwich Generation |
Instead of more time spent in Florida, she’s still stuck in snowy upstate New York. She traded romps in the sea and traveling the world for her daily visits to her mom, who’s in a nursing home. Instead of the joys of living the snowbird life, she’s saddled with... 
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