Introduction
The idea for this book came to me while driving back from a visit with my 85-year-old mother. This was the second time I’d helped her recover her home after it had been broken into and robbed by vandals while she was traveling. This time, they simply removed the back sliding-glass door (locks intact), walked in and rummaged through her belongings until they found anything they could use or fence. As a Feng Shui consultant and a professional organizer, I’ve gentled many clients through the process of organizing greater chaos than this.
But working with my own mother was light years removed from the less intimate process of helping hundreds of clients with whom I have no deep emotional bonds, complicated history or family responsibility.
Understandably, was angry, confused, adrift and vulnerable. While organizing for another person is always an intimate and surprisingly emotional process because of the personal nature of the information shared, this same process with my mother tipped the scales. It was to be a precursor of things to come—moving her into a retirement complex closer to me.
e both know it is probably the last place she will call “home.” It came at a time when I had just made my own move back to my Texas roots, down-sizing and settling in for my own “next stage.” Unlike my work with clients, this sequence of events unleashed long dormant emotions and a few new ones I hadn’t even suspected were germinating.
My mother’s life and mine are hinged together at the core, and every decision we make together is a negotiation; every decision I make alone is loaded with an assumption that I know what is best for her and the realization that¾if I am wrong¾there might be hell to pay later for one of us. I want to “do right” by my mother, but I am wearing many clashing hats: her little girl, a seasoned professional who does this for a living and the new and odd role as parent of my parent. As we desperately tried to find the documents the insurance company demanded before it would support her claim, part of my brain fast forwarded to the future when I may be called upon to find financial documents, medical records, title to the house, etc. Although documents were in a worse than normal state of chaos, it became clear that she had never had a coherent system and important papers had been stashed in little nests all over the house. She had also secreted-away the silverware and other valuables in hiding places in the back of kitchen cabinets and God knows where else. The thieves obviously knew this tendency of older folks to hide things, because they even dismantled parts of the attic looking for treasures.
Why didn’t I know this about her?
Her house had become a shrine to all the memories of a life gone by: one where picking cotton and selling tomatoes earned her college tuition at LSU where she met and married my dad—a handsome, free spirit. I found his picture again and again¾this time standing in front of a B-52 bomber looking like Clark Gable in fatigues. After thirty-plus years of marriage and my father’s death, there were more recent pictures of her in a newly crafted solo existence. Some were pictures of her birding in Costa Rica. Others were from her period of volunteering in remote sections of Big Bend, the source of the her stories of picking up the pieces after drug-deals-gone-wrong resulted in bodies—dead and alive—deposited at her doorstep. How do you go from such an independent and adventurous life to being the victim of break-ins and your daughter moving you into safer terrain?
You just age, that’s how.
As baby boomers, we ourselves are aging. There—I’ve said it and it’s still ringing in my ears. Not only are we moving our parents into the next stage, WE are trying to find our way through a process for which the paradigm is just now being created. We are pioneers in constructing a new approach to aging that is defined by active lifestyles and more open relationships with our children, coupled with a shifting financial terrain and at-risk social security. While active-lifestyle retirement communities are one of the fastest growing businesses in the U.S., there remains a scarcity of tools at our fingertips. This book is offered both as a shared experience and a guide to navigating this new terrain.
At the heart of the journey is creating a sense of place, whether it is for our parents or ourselves. This is soul work. It transcends the process of finding health care, safety and “good help,” all of which keep us alive, but not thriving. That’s the job of environments that feed the emotions and connections that keep the spirit alive and well nourished. All are essential to life. To ignore the latter and keep one alive in the absence of emotionally engaging surroundings is to starve the spirit, the essence of life and well-being. Starving the spirit results in anger, depression, a feeling of helplessness and ultimately the loss of the will to live. It sucks the lifeblood and leaves those who have given their lives over to doctors’ appointments, walkers and nursing care lost in a land of foreigners, people who frequently don’t listen, and when they do, they seldom hear. The body is safe, but the soul hungers.
As we grew up, my mother shared with us her favorite poem. In trying to recall the circumstances of its being mentioned, I remember that we always had flowers around the house: gladiolas, pansies, zinnias, gardenias, bottlebrush and camellias. At some point, as I was leaving to set up my own home, she reminded me to always have flowers, even if I had to take money away from something else. Here is the poem:
Helping an elderly parent downsize and go through a process that we, ourselves, are loath to do is not the same as guiding someone who is upwardly mobile and enjoying the climb. The realities of divesting and de-cluttering, both actions you may have initiated in the past, are different. The process bears some similarities in mechanics, but not in emotions. Managing these emotions, supporting the day-to-day practicalities with soul and beauty, and enriching your relationship with your self and your loved ones are the goals of this book.
I have seen the devastating consequences of well-meaning friends and children going through Mom’s and Dad’s belongings without realizing the fragile nature of what they were doing. Trust is destroyed, feelings hurt, relationships damaged at the very time in life we have the least opportunity to repair them and our hearts ache to give our parents what they need.
These are crucial times for us all. We can choose whether we merely survive, or whether we thrive by moving forward with grace, insight and humor. The tools and insights offered in this book will guide you through the process of creating a life for yourself or your parent that is characterized by insight in the face of challenge, grace in the process of aging, empathy in the midst of conflict, and beauty in the presence of functionality.