By Rita McInerney

Outside the glass-walled room, spring beckoned with fresh green loveliness. Inside, the topic was people in the winter of their lives and those who care for them.

Adult children, parish workers and some lively senior citizens spent Saturday, April 5, talking about how to help the increasing numbers of families caring for aging parents. The workshop, “Love Them While You Can,” was held at Holy Family in Marietta.

How parish groups might give the caregivers, worn down by stress, anxiety and the dread of death, a chance to “go and sit in the park,” was the focus of prayer, videotapes, discussions and sharing over lunch.

In addition to adult children reciprocating the loving care given them by parents who now need that same kind of care, the care-givers can be spouses, siblings, older persons helping and being helped, friends and church or community groups.

Needs identified during the five-hour session are for parish support groups for the care-givers, and transportation assistance – to the doctors, to church and to social outings. Visitation, telephone reassurance and respite care are other areas where support is needed.

“Love sets up anxiety, especially when living together. And everybody’s needs must be met,” Pam Buckmaster, coordinator of the new parish outreach program at Catholic Social Services, told the 25 people attending the workshop.

Some key words upper-most in the care-givers’ vocabulary, she said, are: feelings, the wide fluctuations of emotions experienced – positive, angry, guilty, frustrated; family, interaction with the extended family; children, their needs for space and quiet times versus the needs of the aging parent or parents; situation, the different needs and responses and the constantly changing elements of the situation; resources, do they exist, the way parishes can help.

It’s a myth, Mrs. Buckmaster said, that families are not taking care of aging parents as they used to. Families are doing their best to respond. But, she added, it’s a big concern of people in the field of aging that the burnt-out, frustrated or guilt-ridden care-giver sometimes reacts with physical or verbal abuse.

A group discussion led by Linda Garcia, director of volunteer for Cobb County Senior Services, disclosed one support group many did not know about, Cobb Concern for the Aging. This county-sponsored support group for care-givers meets the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at 57 Whitlock Ave. in Marietta.

Participating in a support group with people you don’t know is group therapy that can lead to openness and honesty. “Once you say how you really feel, you feel better.” Such groups, Ms. Garcia said, “can open you to what others are going through. You see others in worse situations.”

Transportation Needs

What’s going on in your parish? What would you like to see happen? Were questions posed at the group discussion on transportation and visitation.

A big unmet need for many care-givers is transportation. One woman attending with her husband said they are taking care of both her mother, who will be 83 in June, and his mother, 87. Their physical conditions require frequent trips to the doctors. Both see five different specialists, a number the daughter is trying to cut back.

Mrs. Fran Steinbrenner, 78, and a leader of the seniors group at Holy Family, commented, “We’re not finding the ones who are handicapped. They’ve been homebound so long they don’t care. We have to make them care.” Mrs. Buckmaster agreed that often the attitude of a shut-in can become brittle. Then, extra patience and understanding are required from the volunteer.

One woman mentioned that at her parish dependent people often don’t want to feel they are the ones a special event or service is planned for. “They ask if they can help, they don’t want to openly say ‘I am in need.’ You have to get to know the person, get to be a friend.”

“Have a friend, be a friend,” Mrs. Steinbrenner responded, adding a caution, “don’t spread it on too thin. Keep it one-to-one. Whoever takes on the responsibility must follow through.”

Girl Scout Visitor

One man described his mother-in-law. Still mentally alert, she is confined to a wheelchair and lonely. For openers, he suggested telephone contact from a parishioner, then perhaps a visit. With “so many people, everything is there, but they are locked up inside four walls, with a television set.”

Several people nodded when a woman said that her mother didn’t want visitors. Another recalled how the Girl Scout selling cookies was the only person her mother enjoyed seeing. That “children are often the breakthrough” found no dissenters.

“We are really failing the elderly who want to get out,” someone remarked, while someone else mentioned that there is no public transportation in Cobb County. The county does provide the needy with transportation to essential appointments, but not for churchgoing or visiting. This is no good at all for the middle-class elderly who are willing to pay for rides, a service available in Florida and many cities throughout the U.S.

During the group discussion on respite care, Mary Cobbs of St. Joseph’s Hospital talked about the hospital’s plan to hold classes for training volunteers in skills necessary to give short-term relief for care-giver families.

Telephoning those who live alone to check on their health and needs was the subject of Mary Anne McNamara of Holy Family. Calls should be made at the same time each day and need not be lengthy. The telephone volunteer would be a form of security, and a pleasant break in a long, lonely day. Each volunteer would have telephone numbers of family, landlord and neighbors in case the elderly person did not answer the expected daily call.

Parish Support

Someone asked if pastors are tuned in to the aged of the parish. Chances are good, it was agreed, they would have knowledge of the homebound and the ill. But what about “Joe Blow” in the pew, the Sunday Catholic with no parish contact or involvement? “There are more of them than of us, we need to get to them.”

What brought them to this workshop on such a beautiful Saturday when there were other needs to be done, Mrs. Buckmaster asked? “I came because I recognize that I need a support group, the elderly need support, our children need support,” one woman admitted.

Mrs. Buckmaster said it was “very feasible” within the near future that each parish identify two parishioners to serve as facilitators for a support group. Pat Cleveland, a professional on the staff of Catholic Social Services, is available to train them at a half-day workshop, she said.

“Our office is available to work in a direct way, helping to find volunteers, training them and reinforcing them,” she continued. It is also a good source of resource information including a videotape on ministry to the elderly which is available to parishes.

Joan Lucas, president of the Atlanta Archdiocesan Council of Catholic women, workshop co-sponsor with Holy Family and Catholic Social Services, commented on the predominance of women attending. “Yet it makes it so much easier when the two of you are involved.” Earlier in the day, her husband Bill had remarked to members of his discussion group, “These things we’re talking about. Each of us could write a chapter.”

Family Sagas

One of the happier stories among the people attending was that of Mary Schreiner, of the religious education staff at Holy Family, and her mother, Mrs. Edna Murphy, widow of a Rochester, N.Y., newspaper editor, who still thrives on her daily paper. Mrs. Murphy relocated to an apartment in Marietta from Amherst, Mass., late last year. Now mother and daughter, always close though far apart for 22 years, are trying to catch up on what they missed. Both acknowledge it’s a difficult adjustment with Mrs. Murphy admitting that “It takes longer to adjust when you are older.”

Mother, daughter and granddaughter Susie, a student at the University of Georgia, have formed a habit of going out to brunch on the Sundays when Bill Schreiner is busy with choir duties. Mrs. Murphy is a fount of family history and memories for a granddaughter not used to having grandmother nearby.

The couple who are taking care of both their mothers left the workshop encouraged. They were drawn to the workshop in search of “just being able to share with someone.” They found generous sharing.

In a telephone conversation with the Georgia Bulletin a few days before the workshop, the wife care-giver, talked about their situation.

The couple was transferred here last February from Louisiana, a happy move for them since their only son, his wife and only grandchild live in the Stone Mountain area. (Both husband and wife were only children also.) In Louisiana they had built a home with separate living room, bath, bedroom and dressing room for her mother. It was impossible to find such a home in the Atlanta area so the couple had to build a house copying the floor plan of the home they had left.

Finding Friends

“I am looking for ideas. I would like to find something that would interest them. To get a little more individualism into this situation would be helpful. My mother went to a senior citizens group before we came here. She had a couple of friends close by and one of them drove.

“She eliminates herself from certain situations. Won’t go to anything that requires she bring a covered dish. My mother-in-law is facing physical problems for the first time in her life.”

They don’t express interest in finding an activity, she admits. But she feels they might enjoy getting into a new situation “once they get over the initial reluctance.”

Both “definitely” get depressed, she said. “Sometimes they make me aware of it.” Her mother-in-law still has her home in North Carolina and insists she is only with her son and daughter-in-law for a visit. But “she is facing physical problems for the first time in her life.” Her daughter-in-law says with empathy that she had lived in the same town all her life “and the last thing she ever wanted to do” was leave the place where she had so many friends, support and memories.

In this situation where there is a “little too much closeness right now,” she and her husband are “trying to take one step at a time.”

As the workshop drew to a close, one person suggested they deserved gold stars. In place of the stars, the husband said, they will settle for “survival and serenity.”