Retired Veterans Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Reminiscence on Memorial Day- Serve it to Elders Along With Hamburgers

May 26, 2022

What is Reminiscence- It isn’t new-It’s how history was recorded-

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other valiant tales. Ulysses and Penelope may be coming to your Memorial Day Barbecue this coming weekend.

But storytelling only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers.

Tips to Capture Elders’s Stories

Here are some tips to use if they want to capture these family tales during Memorial Day weekend with aging parents—a perfect time to do this. If you are gathering at a memorial day barbeque, ask, older family members how they celebrated the holiday that begins supper, when they were young.

Then use empathetic listening.What is empathetic listening? Make all the messages you are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to you

What is Reminiscence-Asking questions that prompt the story

But don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story.

See if they will follow along.” Did you go to Memorial Day parades when you were a kid or march in one after the war ( pick his war)?” Did your parents have barbecues to start the summer ?”. “What was it like being drafted? Where did you serve?

Music is just next to memory in the brain.

Alive Inside can be used for elders with dementia. So 50’s Rock and Roll, Little Richard, Bill Haley, and if they are older the Four Freshman. Play elder’s music at your event and ask older vets or their wives or widows for stories of the Vietnam War, Korean War, or Iraq.

Two technology tools to help you with Reminiscence for your older client

Story Worth

Story Worth is a legacy-building tool that can help families create a book of memories through weekly easy prompts of questions to ask the older person to create a weekly story about their life resulting in a book after one Year. My daughter gifted it to her Dad and he and the whole family loved the legacy book that was created

Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone and used Dictation to transcribe the memories into written word to print.

Check out my Book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management with more tools for legacy building written by David Lindeman Director Of the Center for Technology at UC Berkeley and Julie Menack of 21 st Care Solutions

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My Dad’s Move To My House with The Wonder of VA GRECC

November 11, 2020

I moved my own Dad so let me tell you our story on Veterans Day.

It is key to his move. My father was a World War II navigator shot down in Poland and transferred to Stalag-VII-A Moosburg Bavaria. He returned home a broken man with PTSD, never took a bus, drove, or flew on a plane again. His disability, like so many vets was untreated for 50 years. He worked as an advertising agent ala Mad Men and drank like Don Draper. Our family crumbled into a dysfunctional maelstrom, as most families do.

VA GRECC PROGRAM SAVES THE DAY

Finally, after my mother died, I talked him into going to the VA where he did get treatment through the GRECC program. My brother who lived with him died, my Dad found his body and the house caught fire, I then moved my Dad out to a board and care and had the house rebuilt. However, it was Edgar Alan Poe’s House of Usher. The perfect storm of 91 flooded the whole house again just like Hurricane Sandy. We lived on the bay off the Jersey Coast, since devastated by the rising ocean.

On Christmas Eve I got him an emergency flight to California with only his clothes and he moved in with us for 20 years, until his death. Was it a good move-?

Yes, it was a great move.

We compensated by moving into our attic, which, had been renovated with a bedroom, bath office, etc. So my Dad had privacy, although he was on the floor with his 8th-grade granddaughter now 40. They both had their own bathrooms. He became the center of the family when he had been a distant removed father. His great-grandchildren my brother’s son Chris my grandchildren Julia and Joseph and my children Jill and Kali adored him and he loved them. He was “ Pop”.

The VA GRECC program was superb.

I got him enrolled in the VA GRECC program in Menlo Park near us, and they took care of his heath for 20 years with the unmatched expertise that the VA is capable of bringing. I cannot say enough about what a great service GRECC rendered him. After 50 years of no help, they showered him with great preventative care, top-notch geriatricians, transportation, and financial support, and at the end home care until he died.

So on Veterans Dad, I would like to give you my own moving store and remind you of the horrible struggle veterans go through, especially PTSD Vets like my Dad, salted by the anguish visited on their families. But there is a great part of the VA and its GRECC. So happy Memorial Day Dad and so glad you moved in with us, died among his family, and was so well served by the VA GRECC PROGRAM

Save Post Our Office -Shut Down is Devastating Threat to Elders

August 18, 2020

The Slowdown by the US Postal Service is Calamitous to Older Americans

They grew up with the mail reaching Americans regardless of their political party. Older people knew it as the beloved circulatory system of their communication and now much more that. For them, it was “enshrined in the Constitution.” Article 1, Section 8 says: … The U.S. Constitution, in 1789, authorized Congress to establish “Post Offices and post Roads”, because they grew up taking civics, which was zeroed out of the national curriculum to our peril.

In an NPR interview, a postal carrier states “I mean, for goodness sake, I think the Grand Canyon, we reach people via donkey”.

Now every American and the elderly seem to be getting their mail by donkey

This slow down to mail is a crisis for seniors. It is about “not getting” the ” Much more than that” I talked about. Older people depend on the timely mail delivery of everything from prescription medications to Social Security checks, to Va checks and free VA meds sent in the mail. The Postal Service says it’s also the leading delivery service for online purchases. They vote online as they do not want to risk getting coronavirus in the crowded precincts or stand in long lines in the November cold. So elders use the PO to get groceries, emergency supplies, pay their bills by mail, get VA Checks, and send the precious cards from their grandchildren.

Shelter in Place Takes meds on-line delivered by PO

During COVID -19, elders medications not arriving on time in the mail becomes critical to their health. Seniors are supposed to shelter in place, so online delivery by the PO gets them the medications they need, delivered to their home. They are told not to go to the pharmacy and risk infections. A whopping 20 percent of adults over 40 who take medication for a chronic condition get those pills by mail order, according to a survey by the National Community Pharmacists Association.

Wildfire Tornados, Hurricanes, and COVID The Trifecta of death this Summer

On top of this, we are in the spine-chilling season of weather emergencies. The West just started the brutal wildfire season where California is now having wildfire tornados. Deep in the hurricane season this month, when climate change has doubled our chance of these fearsome storms the East coast is threatened daily by these mammoth storms actually 2 right now. In an escalating COVID-19 calamity where elders are the most at risk for death, they are faced with mind-bending double disaster threats.

The CDC is telling seniors to shelter in place

and get their meds and emergency supplies on line in their warning” Give yourself more time than usual to prepare your emergency food, water, and medicine and medical supplies. Home delivery is the safest choice for buying disaster supplies;” But the mail slowdown and nasty weather have colluded to stop this lifeline. So deliveries are not the safest choice if they do not get there before the disaster. Seniors cannot always go to shelter because people are less than 6 ft apart, so older people are going to die at home or end up in the COVID infected hospitals in November Twindemics without all the medication they need. They will die needlessly if their write-in ballot never shows up or they are reduced to standing in freezing lines at the polls.

PO Destroying Huge Machines That Sort the Mail to Slow it

That lifeline is being cut by the head of the Postal Service the US postal service, laying off workers, 33 top supervisors, taking mailboxes off the street dragging off out over 50 huge bar code sorters worth millions and destroying them wrecking the very equipment that makes the mail go fast—–make all those critical ways to destroy the PO- a beloved circulatory system in our country.

Call Your Local Congressman or Woman

If you work with seniors, have them in your family or care for them to do this to help. Call your representative in Congress and tell them you want them to save the Post Office. They want to get re-elected and if enough constituents tell them that this is a critical issue – they act. You might not have had civics but this is how government works, according to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Do not allow our post office our elders our American to dissolve and die. Rage Rage at the Coming of the Night.