Transcriber: Tuyen Nguyen Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Heart disease, high blood pressure, and isolation.
What do all of these have in common?
They are all silent killers.
Maybe the 2020 global pandemic has helped all of us to understand
and identify with being isolated, secluded, and lonely.
Many of us couldn’t survive for one month being confined,
wanting to know when we would escape
and be able to be a part of the world again.
Some conversations I would have with people would go like this:
“I need to see other people,”
and I’m saying to myself, “But you live with people.”
“I need outside people.”
What they were really saying is,
“I want to be around people who have common interests,
share the same hobbies as I do,
possibly the same generation, and just maybe the same memories.”
I am today honored to be with you all
to share my experience with you about isolation.
I was thrust into the role of being a caregiver of my mother,
so some of the learnings I decided to pass on to you all.
Number one, be prepared.
Yep, I said it - be prepared.
Sounds so simple, but for the most part, none of us are really prepared for this.
We just let life pass us by; everyone is going to live forever.
We don’t really have a lot of plans for this; we are not prepared.
So let me tell you my story.
My 86-year-old dad passed away suddenly,
and he and my mom had been married for 61 years.
This was complete devastation for our family.
There are three daughters. We all lived in various places throughout the country.
And where would this leave my mother?
Alone.
So we decided to have a conversation with her.
What would happen to my beautiful mother and where would she live?
This began the obliteration of my sister and myself
in an effort of trying to decide where my mother wanted to reside.
It was a very lonely place for us.
There were many days that we just held our hands over our heads
trying to simply make it until nightfall.
We were grieving my father,
but as importantly, we needed to take care of my mother.
If you're not prepared, this will be a crisis.
Number two,
shut out all of the noise and social opinions of everyone in the community
and your church and your office and wherever else you hang out.
You know why? Because everyone will have an opinion about your parent.
This is where the process of deciding culturally,
because, as you can see, I’m an African-American woman
standing before you today.
However, at the age of five, typically in my race and culture,
we give blood and say we will never,
ever, ever put our parents into a nursing home.
The good news is this, that we don’t put people away, just perhaps our shoes.
At the end of the day, we had some decisions to make.
The news flash is this, though.
With us having to make these decisions we actually had some options.
So one of the options
would be for my parents to have lived in independent care together.
Of course, this failed because my dad had already passed,
but I still want to share with you the insights of independent care.
They would have downsized our family home.
They would have moved into independent care together,
making new friends and keeping the old, driving their cars and vehicles,
still cooking, and really enjoying all of life together.
Not if, but when one of them would have passed away,
this would have made this entire process a lot more palatable.
Number two,
an ALF, which is affectionately known as, of course, the formal name -
an assisted living facility.
This means that while you may no longer be able to run 20 miles,
you can run 10.
You still have the opportunity to go and come as you please
without having your overbearing children, like myself,
give you a permission slip to go and have lunch with other people.
You can do it all on your own.
The beauty of an ALF, though,
is that it provides a safe haven and it provides medication management
for your loved one.
And the third option of these three is, of course, the nursing home option.
So here’s the good news - you actually have to be nursing home appropriate.
You can’t just go and decide one day,
“Hey, instead of going to the grocery store,
I’m going to take you to a nursing home.”
That’s not how this works.
With those three options in place, being social like my mother is,
we decided to go the ALF route.
This gave us the opportunity for my mom to still have some level of independence,
still be able to forge her own way, yet not being isolated.
The third thing that I actually learned
was that I should anticipate positive outcomes.
While this was doom and gloom for us, it was a very sad time,
it was actually devastating,
I should anticipate the best for my mother.
And so we did. And so that’s what we got.
My mom, I am ecstatic to report, seven years later,
that she is wonderfully placed in her ALF,
where she serves as the mayor.
(Laughter)
Hence to why she’s not with us this morning.
She actually had a meeting during breakfast,
(Laughter)
And so she also is the bingo champion.
(Laughter)
She exercises.
(Applause)
Thank you.
She does water aerobics. She does cardio aerobics.
I mean, anything that you can name, she does.
She shops.
She also impacts her community
because her community is now her friends in her ALF.
Wow, what a turnaround for us.
This gave everyone the opportunity to breathe and know that she’s safe.
The critical thing for us was asking our mother what she wanted to do.
She had a say so, she was a participant,
and most of all, she knew what was best for her overall.
She is very social, she likes being engaged,
and of course, at the end of the day,
she has the ability to impact all of our lives.
Well, my 89-year-old mother,
she has not only survived, she is actually thriving.
Thank you.
(Applause)