When I was a baby, one of my mother’s uncles died suddenly, leaving a wife with no apparent family.
Auntie was an English woman and not popular, for that reason, in the predominantly Irish family of her husband.
My father was born in England, but raised in Wales, a culture he adopted for the rest of his life, but not always accepted by my mother’s family.
But. he wholeheartedly supported my mother in taking on care of her aunt.
Growing up, I usually went with my parents to visit Auntie, nightly.
My parents went every evening downtown to check on Auntie, who, along with her husband, had converted their large home into a boarding house.
With the assistance of my mother, my father and sister moved in there for a while after my Dad’s first wife died.
On Sunday mornings my father went down to change and clean the cage of Jim, the family parrot. I went along sometimes. Jim didn’t like women and would bite Auntie, if she came to close to the cage.
The only time Jim came out of his cage was on those Sunday mornings; with Jim on his shoulder, my Dad and he would sing the scales as my Dad cleaned his home.
Even when I was very small, I would rub Auntie’s feet when we visited.
Then, just before Christmas when I was 10, Auntie had a massive stroke. My parents were at the hospital with her and it was determined she would not be able to go back home to live.
I wanted her to come live with us and my parents determined they could not let her stay in the hospital over Christmas, so she was moved to our home and there began a wonderful time in my life.
I loved the time spent with her, she told me so many stories of her home and family and I spent all my time visiting with her over the holidays.
At the sometime, my parents determined, Auntie would have to be moved to some place she could be cared for properly. So, the search began.
They toured nursing homes and became very discouraged as most were too large and impersonal.
They had just about given up when they found this one place. A woman, who was a nurse, had looked after her parents to the end of their lives and inherited this wonderful, old home. She decided to turn it into a nursing home and Auntie was one of its first inhabitants.
We. continued to visit even after Auntie had another stroke and became uncommunicative.
There were eight other residents in that home and my father visited with them each, every night. None of them had any other visitors over the five years Auntie was there, except my Dad.
Both the owner of the home and other residents appreciated his visits.
All of this taught me about care and respect for elders. Older people are more often than not put aside by family and friends as they age, discarded.
My experience with Auntie and the other residents taught me the difference. Older folks have a rich heritage to share with others. They hold the heritage and stories of the world for their times.
The role of caregiver is a challenging one. It has an important, if not often thankless, function, which is the topic for next month’s Valerie’s Voice.
