Aging Family visits- when you are worried about the one you love

If you visited elderly relatives over the holidays and saw red-warning lights that everything was not as it should be, these are some things you can do on your next visit. Or if you can get your family to work together this is what your brother or sister can do on their next visit. Now is the time to make family a team.

Contact both an old and a new friend of the older person. Again, call ahead of time to make the appointment if you can. If not, call when you get to town. Contact an old friend who lives nearby if possible.
The record in our mind plays the deepest groves, so an older person will usually have great trust in an old friend. Also that old friend might be able to come through for you in a crisis or can just reestablish the friendship. If they are willing to be a contact for you and your family, get the name and all the contact information about this person, and take it home with you.

See if you can arrange lunch with that old friend and your older relative so that they can get reacquainted. Arrange another time when the two of you can talk privately. Ask that friend if they might be willing to go by your relative’s home on a regular basis—weekly, monthly—and after the visit, to call you and report what they found. This gives you a way of monitoring your relative through a person who has a great chance of getting in the door.
Contact a new friend also. Ideally this would be a neighbor, someone who lives in the same building, someone in a group your relative belongs to. To relearn needlepointing I just joined a sewing group in a local senior center. These elderly women are very close to each other and whistles and bells go off if a member does not attend. This is the kind of group I am talking about.

Set up lunch with the friend and your relative so there is some socialization. Get the contact information of this new friend. Privately, ask them if they would be willing to go check on your relative on regular basis and call you after the visit. Or, like my sewing group, if your relative does not attend, would they call you. You might get them phone cards so it makes it easier for them to do this without feeling that they have to pick up the tab.

With both friends you have a support system of people who can come through in a crisis and perhaps visit on a regular basis.

You might also contact the church, synagogue, mosque, or spiritual center where your relative is a member. Many times the religious leader will visit on a regular basis, and a member of the church will visit. The bonus is that if your relative needs transportation to services, often you can arrange that through the religious group at the same time. My father, who died this summer, attended St. Joseph’s Catholic Church weekly, and they picked him up and drive him home. He actually had not attended church since he was in high school. I got him involved again for socialization. Religious communities are surprising but great means of providing someone to visit your relative and offer them socialization.