When John and I get up in the morning, we don’t just get dressed, we assemble the parts–eye glasses, hearing aid, dentures–and a harness for my flappy foot.  As Bruce Bliven, former editor of The New Republic says, "We live by the rules of the elderly.  If the toothbrush is wet, we have cleaned our teeth.  If the bedside radio is warm in the morning, we have left it on all night. If one of us is wearing one brown and one black shoe, there’s a similar pair in the closet."

     I’m in an awkward position to talk about caring for the elderly because I’ve not done much of it.  On the other hand, I’m not yet old enough or helpless enough myself to need a caretaker.  But I’ve found some ideas and advice about aging to share with you.  First, people who reach the age of 80 without developing a life-threatening ailment, such as heart disease, diabetes, or stroke, are less likely than others to ever develop such an ailment.  Second, many seniors appreciate  knowing that they are cherished for their experience and wisdom.  Finally, experts encourage active aging–staying healthy and continuing to be productive citizens.  That means getting daily physical and mental exercise, including puzzles and games.  It also means maintaining a rich social network, loving and being loved, and having the capacity for gratitude and forgiveness.  It can mean volunteering our talents to enrich the lives of others and thereby improving our own satisfaction with life.  I’m thankful that our Fellowship provides so many opportunities to do those things.

     I recently read a memoir, My Twice-Lived Life, by retired professor Donald Murray.  The title reflects the author’s experience that he relives his life as he writes about it.  Murray concedes that in spite of our efforts to stay active, eventually old age becomes a grim business.  Every year we lose old friends to death or to moving away to be near their children or to enter what Murray calls comfortable ghettos of middle-class aging.  We must also pack away dreams we waited too long to fulfill.  One of my dreams has been to see some of the land in every time zone in the world.  To fulfill that dream I’d need to travel across Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  So I guess I can pack that dream away.
 

     I suppose we all have fears of aging.  Murray says his fear is not loneliness, but bingo.  He’s terrified of being driven to a senior center where he will confront a huge jigsaw puzzle, or be pressed into a square dancing class or a community sing.  My own particular horror is losing control of my life.  I want to choose where to live, when and what to eat, and who will be my doctor.  I even want to make the trivial choices about the color of my walls and carpets.

     For me, the best way to deal with problems of aging is to talk with my adult children about them, and I do that regularly.  My daughter says that as long as I recognize her, she won’t let anybody put me in a home.  That’s fair enough.  If I don’t know my own daughter, it won’t matter where I am.  My oldest son says he will make sure my wishes are followed to receive ample pain medication even if it hastens my death.  Actually, I hope to have managed to arrange to end my life on my own terms before these things happen.

     Now let me urge all who have living parents to talk with them about their desires and concerns.  Where do they want to live?  What else do you need to know about their affairs–medical, financial, personal?  If you’re the elderly one, have you discussed these matters with your children?  Communication is a two-way street and it’s very important to stay in touch.  If parents don’t take the initiative, you  younger folks must do it.  If you’re a senior without children, think about asking a younger person to be your agent and make sure that person knows your wishes.

     Some families keep in touch but still don’t talk about the important things.  All too often when a parent is dying, no family member knows what level of care that person wants.  One of my most agonizing experiences came as my mother was dying.  I had tried while she was still healthy to explain the idea of a living will to her, and I encouraged her to make one.  She wasn’t interested.  So I watched her go through a miserable high tech death, never knowing what she would have wanted.

     I’ll close with one last view from Murray.  He says he once scorned elderly couples who sit in a restaurant eating a meal without saying a word to each other, but now he does the same thing in restaurants and at home.  John and I do that, too.  We share a contentment that, as Murray puts it, "all has been said, shared, resolved, understood."
 
 

    Today I want to share with you some of the things I have done (or wished I had done) to make the lives of the older people in my life a bit easier; these are my lessons in giving care  with sensitivity and respect.

    That antique Mustang sighting last Sunday was someplace in Clearfield County on my fourth weekend trip to Ohio since mid-February. My father had been living with my brother just east of Cleveland since 1996 when he decided he no longer wanted to cope with cooking for himself and his 97-year-old next door neighbor. My father passed away on March 24; he was 93.

    And so, my first lesson is: Visit. Visit as often as you can. Do this primarily for the pleasure of visiting. From early childhood it seems as if I have been on the road, visiting with a grandmother, great aunts and uncles, aunts and uncles…and my parents. Listen to their stories…..even when they are repeated. The more times you hear them, the more likely it is that you will remember them long enough and well enough to pass them along to the next generation. The older people in my life have all enjoyed watching children grow up…and not just their own grandchildren. If you can’t be there, find them a substitute family. My parents borrowed the young family across the street. If you have younger children, find another refrigerator door in an older person’s home on which to display their artwork. A friend of mine tells me that, in urban Housing for the Elderly complexes, the apartments with the street views are in the highest demand. It is the modern equivalent of the rocking chair on the front porch along Main Street. Being part of the daily activity is important. Loss of mobility can all too easily lead to isolation.

    Lesson number two is to observe; this is another reason for visiting often. You don’t need to be meddling or intrusive, but be on the watch for loneliness, depression, or health issues that require medical attention. My father was an engineer and a technical salesperson…an expert at presenting a good impression to the people he met. When he lived in Maine, he considered his family doctor to be a good friend. My dad put on such a good show for this doctor at one appointment that the doctor was unaware that my father was in the midst of a series of mini-strokes. Know also that body chemistry can change enough with age that medications may no longer be most effective at the standard dosages. For example, my mother became zombie-like and developed a permanent heart arrhythmia from a standard dose of an anti-depressant. You may want to learn about the most common side-effects of the medications. And certainly you want to make sure that, if there are multiple doctors, they talk to each other, and that they can all practice at the hospital most likely to be used.

    Lesson number three is to understand the person’s wishes about their medical situation. My parents had made it very clear to us and to their family doctor what they did and did not want done, but they was no written document with these instructions in 1988. The family doctor was away on a Naval Reserve emergency assignment and unreachable when we needed him. My mother, unable to eat or drink or communicate, and with facial expressions frozen by Parkinson’s disease, ended up with a feeding tube and six weeks in a nursing home, waiting for the inevitable pneumonia. We knew that this was not what she wanted. With my father, the do not resuscitate (aka DNR) document was kept near him at home and presented at admission to the hospital and rehabilitation program. When it was clear that rehabilitation was not possible, he was able to go home and be in his familiar surroundings. He was delighted to sit in his chair and watch the birds at the feeder near his window…and even to play a game of Monopoly with his grandson and great-granddaughter when I last saw him on Sunday, March 21. By Wednesday evening, he was gone.

    The fourth lesson is to find ways to take on some of the tasks that will enable the older person to remain as independent as possible. My siblings and I gave my father a Christmas present one year of the services of someone to clean house, do laundry and grocery shopping. Know the financial situation; do the taxes. Track the medical expenses (if you can!). Think of this as practice for when you have to deal with Medicare. You may find some surprises. During one winter ten years ago, my father was hospitalized several times, requiring me to take over his finances temporarily.  That’s when I discovered, that my father, a graduate of MIT, had probably never, ever balanced his checkbook.

    And finally, the last lesson is to take care of yourself. If you are the primary caregiver, you need respite and you need support. Arrange to get away….for a few hours, for a couple of weeks. Caregiving is emotionally and physically demanding. There are resources available in this Fellowship and in the community. Find the resources you need, and try not to feel guilty about making use of them. If you are a long-distance caregiver, there are places for you to find help also. There is an article in the current issue of the Harvard Women’s Health Watch with excellent advice. I will be happy to share that with you during the brown bag session following this service.

    There are, of course, many more lessons to be learned through your own experiences, but these are a good place to start:

 Visit often.
 Observe the situation.
 Understand the medical directives.
 Take on some of the chores.
 Take care of yourself.

     Last fall, Joan Creager emailed me about doing a service on aging and considerations of death.  At the time, I was apparently not feeling well, and I must have looked overly tired.  I think she looked at me and thought that the topic of aging would make a good service.  In her email she envisioned a service to be called “Advance Acts of Kindness,” and it was to be about our own demise and planning for it to help our own children, relatives, and friends.  I replied to Joan that I would be interested in talking a bit about what we can do for our own parents and caring for those who are aging well before they die.  I was thinking mostly about my mother who only died a few months before.  What had I done with and for my mother before she passed away a couple hours short of her 96th birthday?  Did I have major regrets?  Did I have minor regrets?  What might I have done differently?  What I would like to do with my few minutes is to discuss how we might better deal with potential regrets in dealing with our parents or the elderly.

     Regrets are regrettable because they have a tendency to eat at us, to cause acid in the stomach and venom in the soul.  Regrets eat at the spirit, bore into our hearts.  Regrets too often bring about feelings of guilt and thrust blame upon our selves.  And maybe even a bit of hate of ourselves.  As one who dislikes regrets a great deal, I would like to share some thoughts about not what happened at the time of death or after death, but what happened before death so that there were fewer regrets, and how my experiences might help others deal with aging parents, relatives, or friends.  I was fortunate in some ways because my mother lived a long life, with almost no health problems, except for eyesight, until her last year.  She was not bed-ridden for a year or years, she did not have Alzheimer’s disease, and I was not the only one close to her as she aged.  So there are several reasons why I have few regrets now that she has passed away.  And it is not that I have no regrets.  For more than a decade now, I regretted not taking my mother on a trip to Scotland, part of her and my heritage, when she was strong enough and had good enough eyesight to enjoy the heather and highlands.  I do regret not paying more attention to my mother a generation ago when my father was going through two years of dying from brain cancer.  I did not know until the last year of my mother’s life how tortured she was seeing my dad slowly expire a generation ago.  So I do have regrets.

     Knowing that we probably all have regrets, how can we be involved with our parents specifically while they are living?  How close can we come to having no regrets?  Or maybe, how can we have fewer regrets and less guilt as our parents age?  Or, as I look out over this congregation, how can we help those younger than us so that they will have fewer regrets when their elders are no longer here?

     One obvious way to help any aging parent is to go over specific end-of-life issues with parents or the elderly.  End-of-life issues include some of the following:

•  Is there a written will?  (I am not sure how effective children can be to get a parent to write a will, but certainly all of us can have a will written and placed in an estate file, that can be found.  For instance, I would never leave my estate file in my office, for it might never be found.)
• Is there a living will?  (What kind of medical care would the individual prefer?  In the case of my mother, I went over major questions of what kinds of intervention she wanted to stay alive, even whether she would want water in the last days of her life.)
• Is there a financial and medical power of attorney?  (Who will take care, for instance, of paying bills when the elderly person is not capable of doing so?)
•  What type of memorial service, if any, does the person desire? (music, speakers, minister, flowers, or where contributions may be made)  I did this with my mother about a year before she died, and the memorial service was carried out to her wishes.
• Will there be burial of the body?  Cremation (What type of urn - paper - gold?)

     I might mention what my mother-in-law had done well before she died.  She found out what my wife, Sue, and her brother were interested in and placed a sticker on each item.  Before she died, she invited her two children and their spouses and her four grandchildren together at her home.  She brought out about 60 items that she wanted them to have.  Each of these 8 people was given stickers of a certain color, and they were asked to place stickers on any items they really wanted and a half-sticker on items they were interested in.  If more than one person wanted a specific item, then she would broker a deal with those people.  Amazingly, I thought, there were no arguments, and a daughter-in-law even gave a diamond ring to one of the children, not her own.  With a number of smaller items, my mother-in-law asked each of her 8 close relatives to draw cards to see who would choose first any of the items gathered together.  I picked the Ace of Spades (and unlike Sadam, that was a good card) and choose first.  I would have first chosen a small antique lap writing desk, but I knew that my brother-in-law would love to have it.  I let him have the desk, and I have no regrets.  The only problem we had with this dividing up of my mother-in-laws possessions is that none of us wanted several things to the regret of Sue’s mother.

     There are several things we can do as members of our family as we age.  One has to do with photographs.  Often a parent keeps photographs in a disorganized manner.  Sometimes they are in an organized form, but only the parent knows the background of the photos or the people involved in them.  My mother had organized photos, especially in the period from her birth in 1907 to the 1940s, a period which had little meaning to me.  About 15 years ago, as my mother was beginning to have some difficulty with her eyesight, I sat down with her for several multi-hour sessions and went through each of four picture albums.  I asked her where the photo was taken and who the individuals were in the photograph.  I then placed a sticker under each photo with the place, year, and individuals entered.  Only last summer did I find what a joy it was for friends and relatives who came to my mother’s memorial service to sit down and discuss with each other the photographs that she had taken during much of her life.  If I had not decided on the value of identifying photos a decade and a half before, this would have been less meaningful, and I likely would have had regrets.

     Another thing that I did with my mother was to do a searching interview with her in the last year of her life.  There were a number of things that I did not know about my mother even though she had been around for me since 1936 to find out.  I made a list of about 75 questions that I wanted to ask her.  I took out paper and pen and began asking her those questions.  Some were rather private questions, such as why didn’t you marry the football player at Monmoth College, who later became a medical doctor.  She was obviously in love with him, but she said that he would not get married until he finished medical school, and my mother thought that was too long a time to wait to get married.   I went on asking questions for several hours.  My only regret is that I never asked all the questions that I had considered.

     But, have you considered making a video, tape recording, or asking questions that you would like answered of an aging parent, uncle, aunt, and cousin?  Would that person even allow it?  I think that it is most meaningful to any grandchildren, who would like to remember their grandparent, more than they would want to remember their own parent.  Remember what Oscar Wilde once said:  “Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”  However, grandchildren, who may always question their parents, almost always remember the good times with grandparents--what better way to keep that remembrance than through a video or tape recording?  Recreating of their life stories might even be enjoyable for the elders as they recall their earlier life.

     Another way of connecting with older loved ones is to create a collection of reminiscences of friends and relatives while they can still enjoy it.  Have you thought of the possibility of celebrating a particular birthday, wedding anniversary, or special occasion by collecting reminiscences from a life-time from friends and relatives?  Collecting the reminiscences in a notebook can be one of the finest gifts that we can give to an individual.  Often they will cherish hearing from old friends and relatives, who will bring different perspectives and recall various phases of a person’s life.  My wife, Sue, did this for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, when she took her mother’s address book and wrote to each of her folk’s friends and relatives asking that each write something to be included in a 50th anniversary wedding album.  This was a prized possession throughout the rest of their lives.

     I have several other suggestions as Advance Acts of Kindness as Joan Creager calls them and as having a greater connection with your parents or aging others, enjoying life with fewer regrets.  I suggest that you video tape or tape record something of yours that might be meaningful to your parents.  For instance, have you ever taped your or your parent’s favorite poem or short story?  Have you ever collected photos of your favorite times with your family and given them to your parents?  For you who are musicians, have you taped several of your pieces and sent them to your parents?  I began this practice soon after my father died, and my mother enjoyed greatly having piano music that her son played in the passing years.  And she did not complain about the recording imperfections.

     Who has considered writing an obituary of a parent and then having the parent critique it?  Or better yet, have you asked your parents to write their own obituaries?  This might be a difficult thing to ask them to do, but it might also be rewarding.  I only slightly regret never having asked my parents to write their own obituaries.  Nor have I written my own obituary and given it to my two children to comment on.  But, I think I should.

     As a Unitarian-Universalist, I am much more interested in what happens with those aging before death than I am what happens after death.   We may or may not have an afterlife, but we certainly experience their life with them while they are still with us.  I made a commitment a couple decades ago that I would call my mother every Sunday morning at 8:30.  That was partly out of love and partly out of wanting fewer regrets in my life.  Sometimes I did not want to phone at 8:30, but I knew that it would be meaningful to my mother, who was the conduit to my two older brothers.

     I want to close with what I considered the most meaningful closure to a life that I have experienced.  When Sue’s mother was dying of cancer in her 80s last decade, Sue’s mother decided that she wanted to have her family around her for the last few months of her life.  None lived within 1,000 miles from her home in Florida.  She asked each of her children and their spouses and their children to spend two weeks with her at her expense, believing that this would be a wonderful expenditure of her savings.  All 8 individuals agreed to her request.  We decided that every week one of the 8 would fly to Florida and stay for two weeks.  Thus, there was an overlap with one of the other 8 for a week.  I stayed with my niece from California for a week, and it was not only a joy to be with Sue’s mom, but my niece and I had a real chance to bond.  There were no regrets, I believe, for any of us as we were able to bring a certain amount of joy in the life of a loved one.  What could be a better experience here on earth?