Full text of Amy O’Rourke’s talk: How to Relieve the Stress of Caring for an Aging Parent at TEDxOrlando conference.
Best quote from this talk:
“Being with an older person is really an opportunity to slow down. Try to rush an older person. Try it! You can’t do it. So, you have to be there. You have to slow down. I kind of think about it like a form of meditation.”
Listen to the MP3 Audio here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Amy O’Rourke – Founder of Cameron Group Care Management Services
How many of you in here, raise your hand, can easily recognize the two-year-old? Raise your hand.
All right. Now, how many of you in here could easily recognize an 85-year-old? Raise your hand.
This is the topic of my talk today. I’m going to talk about caring for the late life elder, and taking the stress out of it. And I appreciate your time and attention, all of us do here today. Thank you. It means a lot.
I have a master’s degree in public health administration and I have a master’s degree in gerontology, and I’ve worked with older adults for 30 years. But most importantly, I love working with older people. I love it.
The first job I had out of college, I was 21 years old, I was the assistant activity director in a 21 bed nursing home. And every day, I’d walk down the hall and I’d go into Emilia’s room. That’s Emilia with an ‘e’. She would say that every day.
I’d walk in the room and I would say, “Emilia, it’s time to go to bingo, or arts and crafts.” And she would say, “Honey, I want to die.”
And I would say, “If that’s not going to happen in the next few minutes, would you consider going to bingo?”
And she would laugh and she hit me on the arm and off we’d go.
I was hooked.
So, in thinking about this topic ‘lowering stress caring for older adults’ I’ve come up with three areas that I think deserve attention.
One is the denial of reality. The second is knowing some basic ground rules. And the third is accepting it as a lifestyle change.
Now, I have children that say to me, “You know, I didn’t expect this. This has been a rude awakening. I just didn’t expect this. This is a lot of stress.” And their parents are 85. I think, with my 30 years, why are you surprised? How is that surprising?
But when I stopped and thought about it, we live in a youth-obsessed culture. We’re youth obsessed. We’ve got anti-aging creams; we’ve got surgeries. You know what I’m talking about.
We’d love to read stories in the paper about 85-year-olds who graduate from college and 100 year old that climbs Mount Everest.
Well, you know, Condoleezza Rice was offered the position of Secretary of State and she almost turned that job down. You know why? Because her father had had a stroke, and she didn’t know if she could do that job and take care of her father. And I do believe that’s not widely known.
Hillary and Bill Clinton. We all know Chelsea. We’ve watched Chelsea grow up; we’ve watched her go to college; we certainly watched her get married. Hillary lost her mother when her mother was 92 years old. And when I read that in the paper, I ached for Hillary. Hillary has said publicly that her mother was the most influential person in her life; and here Hillary was in the public eye, caring for her mother and we didn’t know it. It wasn’t written about.
Why is that? We’re scared. We’re afraid. We’re afraid of death. You know what the number one fear in this country is? It’s public speaking. True statement. That’s a true statement.
Second is fear of death. We’re afraid of endings; we’re afraid of seeing our parents grow smaller. Do you know you lose five inches? Yes, you do. The little old lady, that’s a real thing.
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We’re afraid of seeing our parents get smaller, more diminished, shaky judgement, walking slower. We’re scared so we deny it; we pretend it’s not there, we don’t want to face it.
Second is ‘knowing some ground rules.’ Now this picture is lousy; it’s very grainy, very grainy. But I kept it up here because the woman, Doris, used to work for me and Richard works in our office, and we had them staged the picture as role-reversal.
Ground rule number one ‘role reversal.’ Get this in your mind, three words, you ready? Big, fat, lie. Role reversal never should happen; we never become our parents’ parents. And if you try, you won’t do so well. Try it. Go ahead.
So, Doris is sitting here and we’re doing this shot in my office, and Doris is squirming and she’s mad. And I think she’s really getting in this like some role play or something; she’s into it.
We got halfway through the shot and she’s really mad. She says, “My daughter Connie talks to me that way and I can’t stand it.”
Wow! I wouldn’t want to be Connie.
So, a few weeks later, I get a call from Connie. Connie says, “Thank you for the experience you gave my mother at your office. She called me up and she said, Connie, you give me so much. You help me so much but I don’t like how you talk to me. I don’t like it. Your boss me around.”
And Connie heard her. She said, “Thank you. I know I do it and I’m going to work on it.” And the two of them are forging a new way of relating at this time of life, and I felt so happy for them.
My friend Carol, who has an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old, and parents, father with Alzheimer’s and a mother with mental illness, says, “Amy, that’s not right. I do tell my parents what to do.”
I said, “No Carol, you don’t. You don’t. You are responsible for them but you have worked on a way of communicating to help them manage this time of life without insulting them, by telling them what to do, and it takes some work.”
Ground rule number two. I know there’s people from the hospital in this audience today and I know that you will agree with me, older people and hospitals don’t always get along. When you’re a frail older person, it’s like an echo system; one thing goes wrong, it can be calamitous.
So, going into the hospital for an older adult is a major decision; don’t minimize it. They go into the hospital. Hospitals are fast; they’re bright; staff running in and out, and an older person moves slowly, thinks slowly, and they can collide.
So, the question you should ask yourself is; number one, if they’re going to have all these tests and not do the surgery as a result of all these tests, get them out. I just love the slide that’s why it’s up there. It’s called innocence and experience.
The last ground rule is that aging is a one-way transition; it’s one way. I met with a daughter and her mother in my office. My office is at the far end of the hall and the mother is a spinal stenosis on a walker; she took a long time to get to my office. We got down there and sat down, I let the daughter go first.
And the daughter starts talking about what she would want and, in some of the things she was saying, she said, “I want my mother to go to the gym five days a week.” and I feel like going like this because I can tell the mother’s like a rage. You know? The gym.
So, I’m looking at the daughter and I look over at the mother, and I know that this daughter cannot face the fact that her mother is where her mother is; she’s not going backwards. Kids want the parents to go backwards; they want them to get to where they were, and they miss where they are.
So, I look over at the mother and I said, “Well, I can tell you, kind of got you mad, what is it that you want?”
She says, “I’d like to go to the movies.” So, I think we can arrange that.
So, there’s a famous author that wrote, when her mother was sick, she says, “I wish someone had told me that I would have all these decisions to make; and none of those decisions would affect the outcome, none of them. And that the most important thing for me is to be there, is to be there.”
So, the ground rule is ‘aging is a one way transition.’
And lastly, the last thought I will leave you with is, this is a lifestyle change; having elder parents is a lifestyle change. You have a child and you, hopefully in 18 to 22 years, you raise them and they go out the door, hopefully. I won’t go in that direction; I’ll stay with what I’m talking about.
So, then you get about ten years off; ten years of freedom, if you will. Then it becomes a responsibility for your parents, whether they live in the same town as you, the responsibility begins. And the kids that have actually less stress are the ones that have accepted it.
You know, we live in such a fast-paced society now. Don’t we? I mean, we just go-go-go. Being with an older person is really an opportunity to slow down. Try to rush an older person. Try it. You can’t do it. So, you have to be there. You have to slow down. I kind of think about it like a form of meditation.
So, I was walking up to Helen’s house. Helen’s 100. I walk up the steps; I walk into the kitchen; she’s in the kitchen. She’s seated and I walk in, I sit down and I said, “Hi, nice to meet you.” And she leans forward and she’s got this big beautiful face, but it’s big. And she’s got white swept up hair, kind of like a q-tip.
She says to me, “What is it you think you can do for me?” I just got here. I don’t know. She leans back in her chair and she says, “I don’t know why I’m still here.”
And my heart just… and I said, “Maybe you’re here because I needed to meet you. Maybe you’re here because I needed to see and experience you.” And she leaned forward and she took her hand; and that moment is still with me.
So, I would say to you, this is a rare opportunity; a very, very rare opportunity. Don’t miss it.
