Solutions
To Your Caregiving Situations
Throughout Your Caregiving Years
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Managing The Stress ~ Making The Decisions ~ Discovering The Meaning |
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Solutions To Your Caregiving Situations Throughout Your Caregiving Years |
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Someone
Like You: Elizabeth Cohen, Binghamton, N.Y. Care recipient: Elizabeth’s 84-year-old father. She also cared for her mother until her death last year. Nominated by: Melanie Thomas, Elizabeth’s sister Excerpt from nominating letter: I wanted to recognize my sister Elizabeth Cohen as a Caregiver. I am very proud of her as she not only took on the caretaking issues of my father with ALZ she took the time to share her story in a book. It is an incredible story of her journey and has a unique twist. This is a Caregiving Battle Won! In Elizabeth’s words: When I feel stressed, I: Read. I read memoirs now. I just read “Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood” by Alexandra Fuller, “The Story of My Father” by Sue Miller and “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. My current challenge is: Seeing my father through the end of his life in a dignified and pain-free way. When I have an extra five minutes, I: Hug my daughter and play with her. My mantra is: Keep going. The legacy I would leave to another family caregiver is: This is terribly difficult but beautiful. My 2004 goal is: Writing another book. My holiday plans this year include: I want to get through them. I need to create some rituals for our holidays. And, I need a ritual that marks my mother’s death. When her father came to live with her, he was not the man she knew. Alzheimer’s had taken its toll, the forgetting had begun. And when her father arrived, her husband became the man she did not expect. In October of 1999, nine weeks after her father arrived at their Upstate N.Y. farmhouse, her husband left. Her winter was spent caring for her 79-year-old father and her infant daughter and trying to keep her job as a reporter for the local newspaper, Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin. It’s what makes a story—-and what made a book for Elizabeth Cohen. Her book, “The House on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Learning and Forgetting” (The Random House Publishing Group, April 2003), chronicles her same-time experience of life’s ending, her father’s decline, and life’s beginning, her daughter’s growth. In many regards, Elizabeth’s story is one of ages: When her father came to live with her, she was 40, enjoying a three-year marriage to her twenty-something-year-old husband, Shane, and doting on her almost one-year-old daughter, Ava. Then, her husband leaves her for an 18-year-old. The ages tell the story. Her father becomes the man she needs that winter, the man who keeps them warm and safe during a snowy and cold winter. Her father becomes the man who mirrors the miracle of young life, who forgets his name when Ava learns hers. Her husband returns, ten months later, when he becomes the man he can. When Elizabeth’s mother becomes ill in October of 2001, she moves to Elizabeth’s home—and Shane cares for her until her death eight months later. Elizabeth became a caregiver to her father because her mother and her sister, who lived in Albuquerque, N.M., could no longer manage. A phone call from her sister brought their father to Elizabeth’s home: "Please," her sister pleads. "Take Daddy." A scenario that can tear a family apart. Ultimately, it brought Elizabeth’s family closer. Elizabeth and her sister, Melanie, spent the last six days of their mother’s life together, at their mother’s bedside. In the throes of the winter of 2000, mourning her husband, grieving her father, and raising her daughter, Elizabeth found herself unable to sleep one night. She returned her wandering father to bed; he fell asleep, she could not. She went online and into a chat room for family caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients. After sharing her story, a fellow chat member told her: Write this down! And, so she did—-she started a diary about her experiences. “Once I started,” she says, “I couldn’t stop.” When a friend from New York City, who works for book publisher Random House, came for a visit, she marveled at what Elizabeth already knew: The incredible story of learning and forgetting, all under one roof. She, too, encouraged Elizabeth to write about the experience; Elizabeth shared pages of her diary. Those pages became Elizabeth’s caregiving memoir. “It was the most heartbreaking, stressful but best time of my life,” Elizabeth says. “I was alive and in the moment. I lived every moment in every day.” Four years later, Elizabeth’s father now resides in a near-by nursing home. She visits almost every day. Her sister now lives nearby; they are best friends. Elizabeth’s lesson learned was that she had to let go any anger she may have felt toward her mother, her sister and her husband: “I’m a better person because I did,” she says. She also releases herself of any guilt, especially about the decision to place her father in a nursing home. “You have to save yourself,” she says, “They would want you to save yourself.” Meet our Other Winners: And, meet winners from previous years: |
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© Tad
Publishing Co. 1996-2003 |
