This week, Barack Obama’s campaign announced that he will be taking time off from the campaign trail to visit his ailing Grandmother in Hawaii. Barack’s Grandma, Madelyn Dunham, age 86, is in declining health and her situation has become critical after being discharged from the hospital.
We will all be Caregivers at some stage of life. As a family or professional caregiver, you will experience the daily challenges of assisting someone else with their “activities of daily living”. This is the term used in the care industry for all the tasks we engage in throughout the day from eating to bathing to exercising. Seniors with memory loss may also require additional reminders to maintain their daily schedule.
Hospice training teaches that the healthiest way to lose a loved one is to be able to plan ahead for their death. This allows you to better come to terms emotionally with the expected loss and to have quality time to share with them to say the things you would like. Just being able to say goodbye makes the loss a little easier.
I have found that this only comes true after the person you love has passed on. It is still difficult to make peace with the loss ahead of time, as you are still dealing with anger, sadness and perhaps denial.
I respect Barack for maintaining a relationship with his Grandmother and for making the time to spend with her to say goodbye. This sets a nice example for dealing with the loss of a loved one for other’s to follow. And it also highlights how much more difficult caregiving can be when you are a long-distance caregiver. Caregiverlist tries to assist in long-distance caregiving by providing information on services in each state.
