The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care

The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care

When do we owe people the full truth about their lives? What happens when people cannot understand the truth or cannot accept the truth, so insisting on it only causes them repeated pain? The streetscape at the Lantern, the home at Chagrin Valley, is particularly...
An anti-aging researcher faces the loss of his inspiration: his 96-year-old father

An anti-aging researcher faces the loss of his inspiration: his 96-year-old father

The younger Peshkin, 48, studies the biology of aging at Harvard Medical School in Boston. A broad-shouldered man with a twinkle always lurking in his brown eyes, Peshkin has been obsessed with aging since childhood because he worried that his father — then as old as...
Fishhooks

Moving In with Mom

My 100-year-old mom was heading for the bathroom, and that meant I was headed there too. Until just a few years before, my mom had led a fiercely independent life. And then she got pneumonia. She needed live-in help, and it took me about 10 seconds to decide that that...
Fishhooks

In Eldercare (and Life), Don’t Be Surprised by Suffering

Like many of my friends, I’m at that point in life where things keep happening. Parents are sick. Kids are struggling to become adults. Jobs are lost and sought. Hormones shift and we vacillate between moods. Our outrage against social injustice rises and falls with...
Caregiver Forums Are Depressing, But They’re Supposed to Be Depressing

Caregiver Forums Are Depressing, But They’re Supposed to Be Depressing

A couple of years ago Williams started the r/caregivers subreddit. It’s a place where he and fellow caregivers can talk about the stresses, questions, and sadnesses that come with supporting an incapacitated loved one. The community is small but dedicated, and...
5 assisted living myths

5 assisted living myths

How many of you have promised that you’d never abandon your parents to die in a home? You can imagine the sadness…and the smell, right? But that’s not what I experienced when I visited my grandmother. I’d say hello to the folks at the front...
Caregiver Forums Are Depressing, But They’re Supposed to Be Depressing

A Day in the Life of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about three years ago. After an extended stay at the hospital and stints in two different rest homes, my mom brought him home to care for him herself. She did this despite warnings that it would be too much for her to handle—even...