Aging

Anna Strosser's memoir served as a reminder that even with the devastating loss of watching someone go through dementia, there is beauty that remains and changes both in the individual and in the individual's relationships. I was most affected by Ken's short letter included at the end of the piece, which allowed the memoir to end on a fairly settling note--with the subjective experience of the individual living with dementia, from whom we are so rarely able to hear. Ken expresses his values, what he is grateful for, and what matters for him on a daily basis. We are offered a window into his frustrations (the repetition of the baseball games, and the missing puzzle pieces), but we also get to see Ken put things in perspective.

Anna Strosser's memoir relates a complicated, and sometimes tragic story. Throughout her piece, one thing becomes clearer to me than anything else and that is that it is impossible to separate out different parts of your life or individualize different family members completely. Certainly, we all have different parts of our lives (professional, personal, academic, etc) and each person is an individual. But Anna reminds me that we are all connected, and that our life experiences are all connected. We cannot simply see Ken in his older years, living with dementia. We see him in his relationships to the family and others, we see Anna in her relationships to others and how those relationships become part of the experience of physical and mental health.

I found this passage to be particularly intriguing and telling of the intuitive way Anna relates to Ken, "He’s not to blame. It doesn’t work to lay the responsibility on him. He gets upsetand feels bad for a while, but doesn’t remember why. The emotion lasts but the precipitating memory of the cause is gone" (72).

I wonder how her role as a caretaker shifted when Ken's memories faded, but the connection he felt to her remained.

How does one shift the way she communicates with someone she cares deeply about when raw emotion is always at the forefront of their mind?

I imagine that writing this memoir has been a way to remember for both Anna and Ken, and to carry the past into the present. I wonder if their children have felt a similar need to do this.

There are two items within the memoir that intrigue me in particular.  The first is the powerful presence of Anna’s sense of place as an organizing principle of her life.  The structure of the memoir is in fact organized around each place of residence, so much so that each move is the narrative creator or at least Keeper of memories and Measure of Life.  The second is reading this in the context of my own Dad’s memoir, which I am first reading at this time.  My dad (with the same day of marriage!) wrote his memoir with dementia in control and it is fascinating to see the story from the other side.

I found this article about disabled women and Feminism I found it interesting. It talks about how women with disabilities feel left out of the feminist agenda.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/24/yesallwomen-but-not-really-how-feminism-leaves-the-disabled-behind.html

Do you find yourself differentiating between moments where you feel you are just his caregiver or his wife or do you see caregiving as a part of being his wife?

How do you cope with anger since Ken holds on to his emotions long after they have passed? 

Donna Caires

Final Post Adult and Aging 11/30/14

One part of Anna's memoir that stood out to me was the relationship between her training and occupation as a nurse an her role as a caregiver, or, more broadly, the link between her profession and her personal life. In the final chapter, she notes how her experiences in her childhood home with an alcoholic father, "studying body language and the meaning of harsh words and anger" and "learn[ing] some safe responses when [she] couldn’t hide to avoid the chaos," aided her in adopting a caring and calm attitude when working with psychiatric patients.  However, though her experience enabled her initially to approach caring for Ken with a positive and confident attitude, she came to realize that she did not know as much as she thought she did.

Both of these pieces highlighted the many consequences to the growing population of older Americans. Emanuel and Silverstone both write that there will undoubtedly be challenges but they are impossible to predict and incredibly diverse. Silverstone speaks clearly about the changing needs of social workers and how the evolving field reflects the challenges Emanuel worries about. Like many of my classmates I am both frustrated and unwillingly relating to Emanuel's op-ed. I spent alot of time reading the reflections of my classmates and it was comforting to know that this isn't just causing me internal confusion.