As your care recipient’s memory moves back in time, you can join him or her in the journey. Use the Internet to research important times in your care recipient’s life; learn what was happening on a world-wide scale, on a national scale and on a local scale, in your care recipient’s home town. When your care recipient begins to speak about certain events or episodes, you’ll have the historical perspective needed to truly appreciate the context of a story.
You also may choose to revisit history by physically making the trip, visiting your care recipient’s hometown, college town, first home. Your trip may take you across town, across country, even across the Continent.
Walking back in time with your care recipient is really a process called life review. As we age, we begin to take stock of our lives, our decisions, our choices, our actions. Just as nature provides a pregnant woman the energy to clean and prepare her home for the baby’s arrival, the life review process allows us the opportunity to heal old wounds, forgive old hurts and resolve old resentments.
As you accompany your care recipient on the life review journey, be an active listener, acknowledging painful memories with comforting words. In addition, don’t quibble over details, allow your care recipient the gift of selective memory. The true gems of the stories aren’t the details, but the emotions and feelings evoked. As you share your care recipient’s life review process, you gain greater insight into your care recipient. When you learn about your care recipient, you learn about yourself.
Recommended Reading:
In her book, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust – A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past, Fern Schumer Chapman chronicles the trip she and her mother, Edith, took to Edith’s hometown of Stockstadt, Germany. Edith left Germany at 12 years of age in 1938; her parents remained in Germany and later died in the Nazi death camps.
In Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders, author Mary Bray Pipher describes how our aging relatives prize self-sufficiency while believing that sharing emotions and personal challenges is a weakness. Pipher, a psychologist, wrote the book while caring for her mother, an experience she calls “horrid”. She wrote her book in order to help others in a caregiving situation feel less alone.
Life Review Resources:
A Guide to Recalling and Telling Your Life Story, Hospice Foundation of America
Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness
