If I Ran the Zoo: How I Would Run a Caregiver's Support Group

Remember the Dr. Suess book, If I Ran the Zoo? Well, I guess I've always wanted to be a zoo-keeper.
Lions, tigers, and support groups, oh my!

I have to admit, I didn't attend a monthly caregiver's support group while I cared for my mom. Why?

I guess you can chalk it up to my preacher's kid background, but I'm about meeting'ed out. I was a notorious school skipper in high school and I still have problems sitting through events where one person talks and everyone else has to listen, stand up, sit down, and clap on que. (Unless I'm the one doing the talking...and even then, I'm sensitive to people's time and attention spans).

For some reason, I'm either the slacker in the back of the room doodling on her notebook and making snide comments about everyone in the class--or I'm the front-row suck-up nerd hogging all the teacher's attention. One or the other--on any given day.

When I walk into a room with a banquet table and metal chairs placed around it, lit by a flourescent light and tired looking folks staring at one another--I want to go screaming out into the sunlight, find the nearest park, beach, or river and take a walk, that or go buy a triple expresso and power shop.

It's not that I don't realize that sharing your experience and working through the stresses, frustraitons, questions, and heartaches of caregiving isn't important. I know it is, but as my southern Mama always said:

"There's more than one way to skin a cat."

So, here's how I would run a support group. (dream scenario)
There would be couches, not metal chairs.
There would always be food and drink--and not just grocery store bought cookies.
There would be beautiful artwork.
There would be fresh flowers.
There would be music playing (sometimes jazz, sometimes, oldies, sometimes classical).

Stickers would be given out for doing things for yourself--making a phonecall, signing up for a class, etc. You would get to stand up, announce what you did for you, and get claps and/or hugs.
There would be show and tell--your latest photograph of your garden, a drawing, mom's broach, Dad's WWII medals, etc.
We'd share our favorite poems, books, and movie suggestons.

We'd have a gripe session and start off with cues such as:
"You wanna know what bugs me?!"
We'd throw eachother a potato to keep it going and anger would get a clap--we need to use our frustrations as energy so they won't implode on us.
We'd have guest speakers occasionally--but not all doctors and elder-care based. We'd have life coaches, a performer from the circus, a juggler who would teach us how to juggle, a policeman teaching us safety practices, a wardrobe consultant for you and your loved one...
We'd plan events--like a mother-daughter fashion show, or a WWII gathering of all the vets in the area--or a vintage car show and ride. We;d raise money for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's--or to sponsor a road trip!
We'd finish each session with either yoga or a walk or dancing. Movement is vital!

There. I might actually attend a group like this.
How 'bout you?

Carol D. O'Dell
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir,
available on Amazon www.mothering-mother.com

Spice Up Valentine's or Any Day

Dr. Christine Northrup, Oprah's gynecologist on speed dial and author of Women's Bodies, Women's Lives, and the Wisdom of Menopause suggests that you spend 30 minutes three time a week in "self love."

Yes, that's right. The M word.

Now, I can only speak for myself here, but unless "self love" includes eating a bag of Dove chocolates, painting my toenails and thumbing through a magazine, I'm going to have about 27 minutes to kill.

It's not like I have to woo myself or assure myself that I'll respect me in the morning...

As a caregiver, mother, daughter, sandwich generationer, pet "mom," I have to tell you, thirty uninterrupted minutes is hard to come by.
(pah dum,dum)

I figure I can blog about this if Oprah can discuss it at 4:00 in the afternoon while I'm making chicken pot pie.

But a healthy love life is important.

Being a passionate person spills over into everything in your life--how you dress, walk, what you choose to eat, how genererous you are with your timea and energies, how affectionate you are to all living creatures--not to mention the effects giving and receiving love has on your heart, immune system, psychological, emotional and spiritual foundation.

I thought I'd suggest a few tips for revving up the ole' love life for couples who also caregivers, raise kids, and walk dogs.

Mom’s Home—Quick, Lock the Bedroom Door!

Tips on How to Enjoy Your Relationship Even if Your Mom

Lives With You

· Put a lock on your bedroom door—and use it
· Sneak around—intimacy doesn’t just have to happen in the bedroom. Be playful! Flirt!
· Nix the old t-shirt and sweats and wear attractive PJs—they don’t have to be overly sexy to be attractive.
· Stay affectionate--even if you have to make yourself at first—call each other during the day just for a “Hi, and I love you,” hug and kiss hello and goodbye, cuddle on the couch, call each other affectionate names/ take baths or showers together (you do remember those?)
. Take short walks together—even 5 or 10 minutes of fresh air is invigorating and gives you a chance to talk
· Plan a surprise—sneak out to the yard after dark to cuddle on a quilt under the stars with cups of hot chocolate
. Laugh! Rent a comedy, pop some popcorn and sit ont the couch together--not in dueling recliners
· Don’t sweat it if you aren’t in a lovey-dove mood--caregiving is stressful and there are seasons in life. Remember though, a healthy love life is healing, satisfying and stress relieving—and better for you than a bottle of Scotch!


Now, go have some chocolate.
Happy V Day!

~Carol D. O'Dell
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir,
available on Amazon and in most bookstores

Kunati Publishing

What's It Like To Be With Someone as They Die?

I wanted to know what it was going to be like.
I knew my mother was most likely going to die at home--in my home.

I had only experienced death in a hospital setting. Different animal.

Living with dying and death is something I had to learn how to do.

In that order. Dying is sometimes a slow process.
Dying is aching, doubting, hoping.
Death is final.

I wrote about my mother’s death in Mothering Mother.
I wrote about it moment-by-moment. I wrote it that way–sitting beside her, journal in hand. A word, or thought, or phrase that represented hours, days, and weeks as my mother took her “good old time.”

She made sure I didn’t miss a thing.
And I didn’t. I glued myself there.

I was scared. Didn’t know if I could do it.
But as we got there–almost three years of her living (and dying) with me as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s took its toll, I found that I was ready.
I had to be there. Follow through. Finish what I promised.

I wrote about it because I could find so little on it.
So little about something we all must do.
Sorry to be so morbid here, but I think it’s important.
Our society is so youth oriented that we don’t look at the full picture–birth to death.

Death was so much a part of people’s lives in the dark ages that they came up with a Latin phrase they used to write over their doors.

Momento Mori. It means, “We all must die.”
It’s known in literature to denote “symbols” of death–black, the skull, the sickle, etc. It dates back to the Roman times, to a general who had a slave walk behind him as he paraded down the streets celebrating his latest victory. The slave would call out, “Momento mori!” Meaning, look behind you, you are but a mortal.

We tend to remember the Carpe Diem version,“Seize the Day!”
It’s the end of “Eat, Drink and Be Merry,” we forget,“for tomorrow ye may die.”

Heavy stuff, I know. But if you’re about to face this, as I had to face this, you might be ready for a frank discussion

That’s why I say we look at it in February and leave the frivolity for May.
We have to incorporate living and dying into our lives in a healthy way. To embrace, and let go, and embrace again.

Readers of Mothering Mother know about my push and pull, mother-daughter relationship. But there was so much that occured before then. Relationships are difficult to translate to the page. So much history, so many tangles and layers.

It took a long time to get to that place–the love, forgiveness, acceptance place. And then, when I finally stopped trying to “fix” us, we were well into the dying process.

We tend to hero-ize or villanize people in our lives.
Good and evil, wicked witch, white knight.
Especially when we’re young–everyone falls into one category or another. The ambiguities and juxtapositions of life come over time.

Daddy was my hero.
I needed one, and he did a good job filling it.
But that made his passing deeper, and bitter-sweet.
Grieving is not only about the five stages of grief. (Kubler Ross–denial anger, barganing, depreesion and acceptance).

We think we can check them off like a grocery list.
No, it’s a circle. We keep going round and round, double back, get stuck, leap frog, only to find ourselves back at square one. But each time we rail against, drown in it, we’ve made progress. Minute progress.

~Carol D. O’Dell
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir
available on Amazon and in most bookstores
http://www.mothering-mother.com/
Kunati Publishing
~Carol D. O’Dell
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir
available on Amazon and in most bookstores
http://www.mothering-mother.com/
http://www.kunati.com/

Care Giving--Care Receiving

We've now turned the words "Care Giver" into a compound word.
Caregiver or caregiving is now written as one word.
Two words smeared together. Apropos. Two lives smeared together.

A Jackson Pollack painting is a great metaphor for Alzheimer's--layers of chaos--some beautiful, others haunting.

I wrote in my book, MOTHERING MOTHER that I thought that caregiving was such a sterile term. Mother has bonded well with her child makes me want to ask if bail has been posted.

I used to teach my daughters that family was an acronym for "Father and Mother, I Love You." It sounded really sweet when they were four and five years old.... Now they roll their eyes and give me a smirk.

Now I have a new word--Care Receiver.It's a two-worder. It looks funny as one word:Carereceiver. Care-receiver.

I prefer, "Loved One."

I'd like to be referred to as the loved one--the one who is loved.

Giving and receiving are reciprocal terms.Someone smiles, the other tears...or just sighs.
m
Carol D. O'Dell, author of Mothering Mother, available at Amazon

Mothering Mother--The Truth Behind the Book

Mothering Mother is my first book. It's my first book published, not the first book I wrote. Like most writers, I have a couple of "dry runs" in the desk drawer. Mothering Mother was published first because I needed to understand myself and my role as daughter, mother, wife and woman. And if I needed it, I knew others did as well.
After seven years of writing and publishing, my own artistic journey was put on hold as my mother moved in. Caregiving is all encompassing and I didn't have enough brain cells to create fiction. So, I did what an artist does.
I turned my surrounding, my present condition into my art. Artists have to create. Boundaries create channels for energy. What I thought was a set back to my writing and my artist self turned out not to be a set back after all.
It wasn't easy either. Writing (or eating, bathing, having a life whatsoever) wasn't easy around my mother. She could suck the air out of tornado. I had to fight for any moment for myself.

I wrote in snatches for over two years--I'd run to the computer and type in a few lines. I'd write on the back of an envelope and stuff in my pocket. I wrote in my thoughts. The irony was that I was too tired to edit my thoughts. I told the truth--the raw, honest, gutsy, imperfect truth. Because I was too exhausted and frustrated not to.

Artists struggle with how to create art in the midst of life and reponsibilities. We struggle with how to tell, to show the truth. We struggle with how to be authentic and how to create beauty, clarity, flow and insight. We do that best when we don't (or can't) get in our own way.
.