Here is a follow up to my blog yesterday from the front page of the Wall Street Journal today Memorial Day.

If you work with elders look into the GRECC program . I can’t say enough about the VA once you get there- (a mountain to climb). But at the top is heaven. My Dad and I got the best care in the world. He had a geriatrician who spent an hour with him each visit, all the supplies he needed, psychiatric services, kindness, gentleness, transportation almost door to door and respect for what he had suffered and who he was in the here and now.

I got a geriatric assessment. I teach it, think it, write it but no one ever had the kindness to offer it to me. I found in those few hours with the VA RN and Social Worker what an incomparable tool it really is. Their goal was to tell me my Dad was going to die and help me through it. I wasn’t a geriatric care manager then- I was just who I really am, a daughter, caregiver and human being in pain. They supported me, gave me tools, consoled me ,cradled me.

So I would like to honor the GRECC program on Memorial Day and say it is brilliant, human, kind, and a tool that the VA offers that is life changing to all who use it. It was all that to me and my father- Harry V. Cress pictured above.