"We do our best and lean on each other"

The popular press coverage of aging falls mainly into two camps: 1) fight it/beat it and 2) what to do when you can't anymore.

At the May 8 Milwaukee Aging Consortium member meeting, a panel of experts entered the important middle space between resistance and resignation. Critical conversations: helping families and elders get ready for transitions went beyond advance directives for the very end of life to address planning for a longer period of change. Panelists and audience considered the questions:

• How do we think about the time of many transitions during the last developmental stages of life?

• How do we talk to our older clients and relatives about making practical decisions that honor their desire for control?

On the same day as the meeting, Kathleen Merryman told a story in the Tacoma News Tribune that illustrates the problems of unanticipated change. The account of a recent shift in her family's universe begins, "Two months ago, in a Maverick gas station in Bridger, Montana, my dad backed into a post and shattered his sanity."

Merryman's 79-year-old father, who planned to live forever, was returning from a doctor's appointment with the news that he had not only an infection but an aortic aneurysm. The collision with a post marked what Merryman's mother described as "all the bonds of reason in his brain shred(ding) at once."

The collision was not caused by the aneurysm rupturing. The impact caused no physical damage to Merryman's father or mother who was also in the car. The cause of the sudden change was and remains a mystery.

But at least metaphorically, in losing his image of himself, he became someone else mentally and emotionally, someone living in a hell populated by delusions. His wife and children (one lawyer, two nurses, and others) were able to move swiftly through the maze of care options and changing housing and financial needs.

Even with the best of family support, the call for strength in the face of interpersonal friction and fatigue stunned the family. They now know "With aging, we do our best and lean on each other."

No matter how much planning has gone on, a sudden change for the worse is devastating. Unlike this story, the sudden changes in aging often follow a longer period of unrecognized decline. But having deep and honest conversations about what really matters and how to support basic values and desires can go a long way toward easing the pain.

It's probably a good idea to decide that "don't put me in a nursing home, ever" isn't the end of the conversation. It's just the beginning.

Some resources from the meeting to help in starting and sustaining the conversations include My Way, an in-depth planning tool from the Milwaukee County Department on Aging, and two documents developed by Home Instead Senior Care: 40-70 Rule 7 Tips (for conversations between Boomers and their parents), and the 40-70 Rule Guide booklet.

Aging in community: housing, services-- the whole enchilada

Yesterday, some 30 people gathered over cheese enchiladas at the United Community Center to discuss ways to "get it right" with senior housing. And that includes making sure the services are there to support a great life into and through old age.

The Next Steps meeting was a follow-up of our earlier Housing Options Summit and, informally, of the UWM Senior Housing Ideas Competition.

Around the table were developers, case managers, architects, mortgage lenders, senior advocates, landscape architects, county department directors, grad students, consultants who put together deals, program developers, senior citizens, and more. Most were concerned mainly with older adults, but some represented the community of disabled people, whose needs are very similar.

They came because they know about the gaps in housing and supportive services that make it hard to age in place—or live at home with disabilities. And they brought with them ideas, hopes, frustrations, and most of all, a desire to make a real difference now.

What’s needed is affordable, appropriate, accessible housing. Right now, the supply of housing that meets all three of those criteria is small. Services and the stuff to maintain a life need to be incorporated into the residence or the nearby community. Safety, beauty, respect, and community life matter. So does transportation. And so does variety: no one size fits all.

No surprises there. But what’s missing is coordination to fit all the parts together, resources and a plan. Political scientist Norton Long said forty years ago that people building economically viable cities are coming to realize that the vision they are seek is not just bigger roads and more tax base but “the possibility of attaining a shared common goal of a better life.” Plans come and go, and we keep trying to figure out how to do it better.

The next step in the process will be engaging in strategic planning, looking at models that work and can be replicated (or improved upon), like Lapham Park. We’re looking for ways to bring all our knowledge and wisdom to existing and new planning and decision-making processes.

We are also looking at what we need to build in terms of better coordination between the range of services and housing options. Stay tuned for more information or forward your name if you are interested in being a part of these exciting developments.

How do I want to live as I age?

I asked Jeri McClenaghan-Ihde, a member of our Board of Directors, who works with Direct Supply but participated in the Senior Housing Ideas Competition with AG Architecture, about her participation.

Aging in Community was a wonderful opportunity to take time to consider what we do as architects and how it can affect the world around us. Here are my thoughts...

Architects provide environments which support strong care models. Having and understanding the philosophy or motivation of our client's thinking allows an architect to produce a customized answer to the question, "How do I want to live as I age?"

I would like to have as many answers to that as possible. It is a very personal question, intimate in fact. Does your spouse know your true answer? How about your kids? You may even be afraid to write the answer down.

I challenge all who read this to consider answering the question and sharing it your readers.

AG's motto, by the way, is "We create community in every sense of the word." They've identified community as the key to living and working, and not just for the elderly.

How do you want to live as you age? It's easy to say "not in a nursing home." But what are the qualities of "the good life" as you grow older? Are they the same when you are 65 and when you are 85?

Banishing the plagues of loneliness, helplessness, and boredom

While nearly everyone says that they want to stay at home until they die, not everyone can. And not everyone should. Sometimes, living at home can mean loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. Another sort of setting can be more like what home should be than the places people have been living.

Some successful solutions will be explored in the second of the pre-competition events leading to the UWM Senior Housing Ideas Competition tonight at 6:30 pm, Zelazo Hall. (Our Expanding Housing Options Summit was the first.)

Dr. William Thomas, founder of the Eden Alternative (EA), will speak. If you don't know about the EA, it's a movement to revolutionize the way people live, especially older adults in the places we've been calling nursing homes.

According to the EA website,

We create coalitions of people and organizations that are committed to creating better social and physical environments for people. We are dedicated to helping others create enlivening environments and the elimination of the plagues of Loneliness, Helplessness, and Boredom. We are dedicated to helping people grow.

The core concept of The Eden Alternative™ is strikingly simple. We must teach ourselves to see the environments as habitats for human beings rather than facilities for the frail and elderly. We must learn what Mother Nature has to teach us about the creation of vibrant, vigorous habitats.

Living in a vital community. Isn't that what we all want?