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Up Your Average is the “no nonsense” podcast made for interesting people who think differently. Learn to navigate your life with unconventional wisdom by tuning in to Keith Tyner and Doug Shrieve every week.
Getting someone to come in frees you to be the son or daughter or granddaughter again, rather than a full time caregiver. And that brings both of them a lot of peace sometimes because they're like, Oh yeah, I don't have to just be the caregiver. I can come and hold her hand or tell stories or just be with her.
Caleb:Welcome to the Up Your Average podcast, where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to level up your life. So buckle up and listen closely to Up Your Average.
Keith:Doug, we got a crowd today. And there's four of us in here.
Doug:I feel like we're at the studio in Madison Square Gardens where everything is compact, and I feel like Charles Barkley in here with all you guys.
Keith:Charles Barkley, you gonna bring your a game?
Doug:I'm on well, you are. I know our guests will.
Keith:I'm gonna let you introduce our guests and kick this thing off.
Doug:Well, our guests are personal friends of ours, and David and I go way, way, way back. Yeah. And, I don't know how far. Twenty years.
Keith:Yeah. Probably. Mhmm.
Doug:And, David's not only a good friend, but he's also a savvy business owner who's helping people who need help in the care community. Maybe you need somebody to come over to your house and help you out. Or he's provided a really world class place for people to stay who might not be able to live alone by themselves. And Tracy, right?
Tracy:Yes.
Doug:And Tracy is my new best friend. I just met Tracy about five minutes ago. Tracy has a fun connection with Libby. So it's good to have you here too.
Tracy:Thank you.
Keith:All this conversation kind of sprung into my mind on a Friday, actually. It was a Friday, probably close to sixteen years ago. I get a phone call by a hysterical sister telling me that the visiting nurses said that if my mom is not out of her house by Monday, they're calling adult protective services. The visiting nurse told you that? Told my sister that.
Keith:And my sister told me that, and somebody this week asked me, Do I ever blow up? And they said, I haven't blown up in years. I did blow up that afternoon. I was not happy with the information that was given me, and we literally didn't have much time to make some decisions. And that's kinda when I really yeah.
Keith:You and I spent time. I don't know if we'd spent time before that, but it was a stressful time. And I assume from what you said, Tracy, that's not an unusual event It's for unusual. So let's pretend that somebody that we're talking to today, that they're in that situation, they get that call. How would you guys counsel them?
Keith:Like, what would you tell them to do now when you got that bit of information?
David:Yeah. Well, first of all, like Keith, I love what you did for your mom. Like, it's actually a model that I tell other families because you were so gifted in the way you communicated with your siblings. You were the first family that I had seen who used the Google spreadsheet to organize the task flow of supporting a mom. And then, you know, you guys were just good at communication.
David:I know it was stressful, and there was a lot that was happening. And so I would say like the step one with families is that communication piece. Because so often, they're in crisis, and they feel the sense of like, guilt and desire to honor their parents really well. They wanna be there for them, but they just the world has turned upside down. The associate who recently joined us, he goes, like, God's timing has really been at work at this because like a week after I started, my wife's dad had a huge setback, and we didn't know what to do.
David:And he goes, I realize that this is not an isolated occurrence. Like, every single person that I'm gonna know or gonna interact with is gonna go through this with their parents. And so it's really starting just with like communication, and that's where really Tracy and her team come into play because she sits down with the families and just gets to know what's going on. Mhmm. We could talk a little bit about what that's like.
Tracy:Yes. Well, it's different every time, and that's why I love to get to sit with them versus, you know, just having a blanket, this is what we do. So a lot of what I do, we were talking as counseling because people do have that there's some guilt. There's confusion. There's fear.
Tracy:Every assessment, I feel like someone will say, I just don't know what to do. You know? And I'm like, well, of course you don't because you haven't been through this, but let's make our best let's take the information that we have. Let's figure out what is a good starting place for your family. And then we do something that some other homecare companies don't do.
Tracy:We have a role called a care manager. And so they don't have to make this decision and then it's just set in stone. So the care manager are just ladies that have amazing compassion and resources and kindness and experience, and then they walk along with them because the minute you figure it out, it changes. So what the care managers get to do is be beside them, visit them, show that we care about them, get involved in their lives, talk with the kids. Because sometimes when we have a care team, depending on how much care we're in there, it might be different caregivers.
Tracy:But then you have that one person that they get to talk to. So I get to tell them that they have that resource and sometimes that makes them feel better and that we can change. You start off with something and a little bit of care and get more or a lot of care and do less. But it's just nice to sit down with them and tell them they're not alone, that everybody one of the things that I love to tell them is that getting someone to come in frees you to be the son or daughter or granddaughter again rather than a full time caregiver. And that brings both of them a lot of peace sometimes because they're like, oh, yeah.
Tracy:I don't have to just be the caregiver. I can come and hold her hand or tell stories or just be with her. And sometimes that peace just brings a lot of peace to everybody.
David:Yeah. For sure. So I'll never forget we had one family, and this guy was a successful business guy, had multiple businesses he ran, and his mom had been an educator, really highly esteemed in leadership in the city. And he came to me and he goes, David, he goes, I'm the only one who can get my mom to take a shower right now. He's like, I give her a bear hug.
David:I close my eyes and take her into the shower, and we get it done. And he had been doing this for like six months before he found there may be other sources. And he goes, I just need help. I can't keep doing this with my mom. I gotta be a son again, not a caregiver.
David:And so being able to step into that, I often say like, we're like a lifeline for people.
Keith:They don't
David:know which way is up. Another woman we helped for a decade had had her mom moved into her house, converted her home downstairs so she could She centered her life around caring for her mom, and she did it super well. But after a decade, she was like, I just can't do it anymore. I need help. And so we were able She just didn't trust anybody else.
David:She felt such an onus to do all of it for mom because of what her mom had done for her. And so she just didn't. But when she finally called us and got some help in, she was like, Oh my gosh, I can breathe again. I went on a date with my husband. I went to a Bible study.
David:Like I am not worried about my mom. So that's a lot about the first step is really connecting and communication and just kind
Keith:of offering to walk alongside of families. So your business is called Senior Home Companions, and you predominantly, at least to our awareness, is Central Indiana. And let's just say there's somebody like this that's helping with the shower or whatever, and let's just say they're in Atlanta and they're watching today. What is the role, the person, the entity they would reach out to to try to find some help? Like how what would they Google, I guess is the question.
David:Yeah. Yeah. You can start with just like home care in the city that you're looking in. And so then there are also often like associations. So there's like every state has a association of home care, so they can kind of vet the providers a little bit more.
David:There's the National Association of Home Care, which has like a membership group as well. But you can really just type in home care Atlanta or whatever to kind of start to narrow the search. And we're happy to help too. I've been on several national boards and stuff and some kind of relationships throughout the country, and we often get this question. And so we have articulated partners kind of throughout the country that we know of people who help.
Keith:I know for us, what I just did was just trying to find all the experts I could, not only in you, but I had other consultants. Like one of the surprising things to me, we basically, this might be considered evidence. I don't know. We can basically kidnap my mom because she wasn't a willing participant. So we brought her to Indianapolis, and she didn't have a way back to Evansville.
Keith:But she came with this bag full of medicine. Yeah. And like I had no idea what to do with it. She had dementia, so she really didn't have any idea what to And do with so there was nobody that knew what was going on with it. And so one of the people we had to hire was a consultant just to tell us what she really needs.
Keith:Yeah. So I'm assuming there's a lot of consultants that could fit in along with what you guys Yeah. Do as
David:So the geriatric care management or like a care manager is really helpful in that situation. Think you I remember who you worked with. She's not in any India anymore, but she is great.
Keith:Was really helpful. Yeah.
David:Yeah. She didn't mess around. Family, what's her
Keith:name? So, yeah,
David:that quarterback role is what we find families really need. Cause you just don't know which way is up. You don't know who to call. You don't you don't have the time to vet the services. It's like one of the things we found is like when somebody gets towards the end of life and they need to engage like a hospice provider, hospice isn't just a singular word.
David:There are tons of different hospice providers that all have a host of different services. And so knowing who the best people are to like get help immediately and who's going to align with your family the best is really a lot of kind of what we do and what these like care managers do. So you
Keith:would be a quarterback for them then?
David:Yeah. Yeah. So that's often what we do for families. The role Tracy was talking about, our care managers, like once they get in there, they're constantly evaluating like the situation and how the progression is going with a member, and then pulling in other resources as needed to like support the milieu of staying wherever they are, or moving if needed in your case.
Keith:We've used your guys' business a number of times, and if you can have a sense that you're worried about the aging process, it goes a long way in laughing because there's just a lot of things that happen that just aren't really pretty. But if you can laugh about them, it's all right.
David:Yeah. Yeah. I remember, I think one of the things with your mom, she really wanted like a dog. And so we had to kick her at the time. She was connected with like this dog rescue thing and she found a dog and brought the dog in, but then the dog kind of became problematic for her.
Keith:Mom Well, wanted a I just gotta say it how it is. Mom wanted a small white female dog, and she called her dog a girl all the time. And I kept pointing out how my mom's black female dog has a penis. It was just all in there. Like, she just, she, what she said she wanted didn't necessarily have to be the solution.
Keith:That's what, we That's discovered with like dementia. I know there's physical ailments and things, but you can have a sense of humor and be flexible. I think you're gonna find the process a lot easier than if you get real rigid. Yeah. Well, and I think a lot
David:of times that's really difficult. We deal with, and I'm sure you see these out of town kids who come in and they haven't seen mom or dad in a quarter or six months, and they come in with the best intentions, and they expect their mom or dad to be who they were six months ago. And the disease just progresses quickly. And so, it it it creates a feeling of wanting to do something in this situation, and that can be good or bad. Sometimes that can be super helpful because they bring outside perspective, and they can rally the troops and kind of like reinvent the wheel a little bit in a way.
David:And sometimes they can be super discouraging for the son or daughter who's there every day. Like, his walkthrough is with mom or dad. And so like balancing that act is real too because everybody's like really generally good intention for the most part. They want to help mom or dad, and they want to do what's best.
Keith:It's what I discovered was, particularly with dementia, but it's probably true with just physical ailments, is learning to communicate better. And so I had to creatively I don't even know how you would say it. I I would redefine the words. Yeah. So so mom every day would say, I wanna go home.
Keith:And so I just define home as heaven. And so instead of saying, you're not going home, I'm going, you're you're going home soon, mom.
David:Yeah. That
Keith:was so like that was almost a daily conversation. Right? Mhmm. But where sometimes my siblings would come in and they're like, well, can't go home, mom. And I'm like, do not stay.
Keith:That's gonna be like a week or two.
David:Let's leave it there. Yeah. We call it, we were really focused, especially at the SOAR College on training around this validation method where you just kinda go where a person is. Like, you don't judge it right or wrong. You're just let's just go into that space where that person is.
David:Feel their emotions, connect with them, talk about whatever home they're talking about for the day, and just live there for a minute. Suspend disbelief.
Keith:One of my one of my favorite thing like, you just have to embrace it. And I would mostly visit mom once a day or so. We'd her physically so she was close to my office so I could go at lunchtime or I could go throughout the day. But one of her manifestations of wanting to go home was she would take her pictures off the wall every day. Yeah.
Keith:Oh, goodness. Yeah. Because she's going home. Right? And so so I would come in and the pictures would be on the sofa.
Keith:Yeah. You know, I'm like, mom, what happened to your pictures? And she would forget why they're there. I don't know. I go, I'll ping them up.
Keith:And so literally, would do that cat and mouse game every single that is.
David:And it
Keith:it was just part of what we did. I would sometimes hang them up upside down. I'd switch locations. I just kind of made it a game for me. Yeah.
Keith:Yeah. Yeah. You just, you just I think for me, what I was able to do was realize that with dementia or Alzheimer's, there's some brain damage going on. And so it's not really mom anymore.
Doug:Right.
Keith:She's doing the best she can to operate this body that she's in. And so I didn't take it too personally with whatever she was spending. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith:We had
David:a lady and she was, she loved her grandkids, for her grandkids to come over and visit her. And they couldn't come every day, but she thought they were coming every day. So every day a carrier would go and they would spend two hours baking cookies for the grandkids. They would get all the ingredients, they do it, they make everything, and then the client would go to bed and the carrier would throw the cookies away and come over and do it again the next day. Wow.
David:Literally every day. This was the ritual. And, you know, some days the grandkids would come, some days they wouldn't, but she was always ready. So you gotta find those things that create fulfillment and purpose for people. Yeah.
David:And I know you see that redirecting thing all the time.
Tracy:Yes. Validating, redirecting. Just it's hard for the family to learn, you know, this was mom, now we're different. But if you like you said, if you can go into it with an open mind and be willing to, you know, go instead of saying, mom, you're not going there, you know, which is kind of our nature sometimes, like and ask questions. You know?
Tracy:Well, what would you do if you were there, mom? You know? Or what's special about that mom? You know? Then there's a little bit of redirecting or reassuring in that.
Keith:Now one of the things that we've noticed over nearly forty years of helping families with their money is very seldom does anybody ever run out of money. Like, we seldom have that happen. And it seems to me that rather than a wife or a husband doing everything for their spouse, that somehow we could encourage them to tap into these resources that they like this is part of retirement. It's not the golden years, but it's part of it. I wonder how we help them use some of those resources to get help instead of trying to do it for themselves.
Keith:Yeah.
David:A lot of times, like what we tell families is everyone's like very independent, right? They don't want to have help. They've been on their own forever. A lot people have been really successful in their careers. And even my grandparents, that's how I first connected with a company.
David:We used a company for my grandparents before I owned it. And my grandma said, I don't want anybody in here. I can do everything. We've been married for sixty years and like I've handled it and I don't need anybody. And I think after two weeks of having caregivers, she actually liked the caregivers better than us.
David:Like the caregivers didn't argue. They did what she told them to do. They took her to all of her appointments. They made her life vibrant and meaningful again, and we're hit or miss. Like we come and go and we don't always do what our parents tell us to do.
David:So that third party is actually super helpful. And that's one of the keys we find in working with families is like the sooner somebody can get used to just having somebody else around, the better. And so often you can do it by identifying the pain point. Like for my grandma, was like she said she was done cooking. She liked to go out to eat, but she didn't wanna cook anymore.
David:And grandpa sometimes wanted meals in the home. And so we said, well, we're just gonna bring in somebody to help you cook. Like, don't worry. They're not gonna do anything else. They're just gonna be focused on your nutrition.
David:But, of course, after two weeks, they were doing everything. And so
Tracy:I think that's one of the most enjoyable parts for me is coming in and finding a way to honor their lives and continue to value them and keep them the dignity of who they are and wording things in a way that they feel they don't feel like, hey, you're failing here. You know? You can't do this. Let's let's come in and fix it. You know?
Tracy:It's it's just a different way to approach it, to have a good conversation, to connect, to talk about their lives, to find something, you know, that might be meals. It might be, gosh, is it hard to put the sheets on? I hate doing that. And I'm like, you know? Yeah.
Tracy:You know, we could somebody could do that, you know, and and and help them see that it's not gosh. Aging is hard, you know, and watching some of these couples or particularly, I love meeting with, you know, the some of the older men that just have had successful lives and careers and, you know, they're have run their families and have always been the, you know, the sustainers and to to meet with them in a way that's like, you know what? You're you're awesome. Look what you did. Like, but help let's let's come in and let's have some these last however long it is, have the most quality and the most life and be the most vibrant it can be.
Tracy:So I think it's just a way of coming at it where they understand that they're still valued, you know, that they're still you know, they're not done. And that if we can help these bring as much joy into the to what time they do have, that's pretty awesome.
David:And the third party thing is really real. Like, instead of, like, sons or daughters often, like, bear the weight of it, they're the one that mom calls all the time to complain about whatever is going on. And so introducing like, you know, I joked with our team a few years ago, go, I wanna change our marketing logo to like, we help find your last best friend, Or, We help you finish well or something. That's awesome. But often that's what we do.
David:Because a lot of their social circles are not as vibrant as they used to be. And so creating these friendships and relationships that give them like a reason to get up in the day and purpose feels
Keith:I pretty think if you watch and go to Up Your Average 55, we interviewed one of y'all's clients, Jan Jeter. Oh yeah. And it was a really good conversation to talk about in her situation, what I think she wanted to do was some normalcy in her life. She would have you guys come in so she would actually go work. Yeah.
Keith:And I was like, Really? And so it was a really cool avenue for her to get some normalcy, to kind of probably have people to vent with while she's working about Yeah. What she's going
David:I know, Gina, one of the things that was important to her was like getting that last birthday. I remember it was his ninetieth birthday. And so, like, the carrier was playing the party for her. They organized all the food. They decorated the house.
David:Like, they invited the guests, and they helped her host it. And I know that was like a huge highlight to her, he passed away like a few months after that. Yeah. Being able to mark that
Keith:was really significant. I feel really humbled that with the aging process of my parents, was able to have a sense of humor because you could take that another way, right? Like you could just go off the cliff. So we my dad, as he was ailing, we were gonna, we had a Thanksgiving Day, we'd reserved lunch someplace, and we're all, I don't remember, there's like 15 or 20 of us loading up into cars, and then you just hear this. And dad did a face plant in the kitchen on the floor.
Keith:And so it's a weird thing. Were talking about, we talked with Mark Richt a couple weeks ago, his book is Make the Call. Like, make a decision while you're staring at your dad on the floor and all these adults in the room and nobody can make the call. Like, what do we do here? Yeah.
Keith:My dad, his response, which to this day, I laugh. He's like, you guys just go ahead and and I'll be here when you get back. You're like, okay, man. We'll see you after lunch. Yeah.
Keith:But making the call, the decisions. Yeah. Say, like, we have three siblings. What if there's two siblings and you don't have agreement? What do you how do you help in that scenario where there's just not a parallel view of what's going on?
Keith:Yeah.
David:Well, I think the best thing we see families do is talk about like kind of which function different kids are gonna play. And so it's often everybody like tries to do everything, and that's when it gets like massively confusing. So like we find families, are a couple distinct roles that typically tend to play out. There's kind of the role of the financial person who's making sure everything's keeping mom going, and they can do that remotely. There's the role of what I call air traffic control, and that's kind of the person who's gonna kind of make decisions and kind of call the shots on the care.
David:And then there's a third role, which sometimes referred to as like help me Rhonda, like the person who goes when it's needed. Like mom falls and you show up and help. And so like those kind of three roles, seem to work well in families that we work with, but you gotta get there. So you gotta like, you know, initially, it's just like everybody wants to do all of them. And so that's where, you know, it's hard to somebody like Tracy or one of our care managers can help just facilitate a conversation around like, hey, let's talk about like, you've seen a third party.
David:Like, it's hard to you're relating to your kids like you did or your siblings like you did when you grew up. You know what I mean? And then it just all this stuff comes into play. But when you bring a professional in who's helped walk through this with tons of families, they can kinda like steer the ship a little bit more clearly.
Keith:What so so you've got the crisis that's going on. Right. What percentage off the top of your head would you say that the parents make the call versus the kids?
Tracy:Gosh. That's my life. Or the I would say the words that I hear daily is mom and dad are resistant to care. So you have these kids who are seeing the need, mom and dad who are resistant, myself or someone else comes in and has a conversation. That's a little bit of what we're talking about before where you're you're coming in, you're helping them understand, you know, we're not taking away your independence.
Tracy:We're not we just wanna be a piece of the puzzle. And so I think that's what I consider a challenge or where I see some of the greatest
Keith:Opportunity.
Tracy:Yeah. Joy, opportunity, fulfillment. You know, when you do get that older couple to say, okay. You know, we see the need, we'll give this a try. You know?
Tracy:But I would say almost always.
Keith:Almost always it's the kids.
Tracy:That are making the that are wanting it. And it's the parents that are saying, we don't need it yet.
Keith:Now, if you're watching this at home and let's say you're 70, it doesn't have to be that way. Like, you guys can make the call. I'm just saying. Yeah. You could be objective about the future is, yeah, I know it's hard to say that I can't do what I used to do, but you could help the kids out.
Keith:And as a kid that's navigated it, just a little bit of a lifeline is really appreciated.
David:Yeah. Well, I often tell people who are resistant, like, we know you don't need help. This isn't for you. You're just doing it for your kids because they have busy lives and they, like,
Tracy:Sometimes feel it is. Sometimes the kids just feel nervous. You know? Maybe they're going on a vacation and they used to stop in and nobody's gonna be there to stop in. Like literally their vacation will be more enjoyable if you let somebody stop in, you know, so that they know while they're in Florida for spring break, somebody's just gonna stop in, you know, help out for a few things and maybe they don't really need it, but the kids have a peace of mind.
Tracy:So I think it could be both. You know, there's a lot of very independent people that are doing a good job, but there's, you know, there's a little bit of give and take. And, you know, what? And sometimes when you wait till you need it, it would have been more beneficial for you to not, you know, get to the place maybe a little sooner than you think. Move that pendulum just a little bit, and that's maybe helpful.
Keith:I think from my own experience that this process as a kid is a lot easier for the C students than the A students because you kinda go, well, let's see how this works. And you figure out there is no perfect answer. Right? Like so for an A student thinking that we're going to get this right, you are not going to get this thing right. There is no right.
Keith:One of the biggest helps early on for us, Connie and I were taking and this kind of sound pretentious. We were taking our first trip to Hawaii. Yeah. And we're our alarm's set. The phone rings before the alarm goes off.
Keith:Mom's had a fall, and we don't know if she's even gonna survive this. And and we've got tickets, reservations to fly out that morning to Hawaii. And and Connie's like, you what are we gonna do? I'm like, well, I think since we don't know anything, we're gonna go to the airport, and then we'll see if we get an update at the airport. We get to the airport, nothing new.
Keith:So I go we'll make the connection in Dallas, and we get to Dallas, and we have to decide whether we go And overseas or I get a call from my mom and dad's pastor, and he says, you know, Keith, this is what the aging process looks like, and this is gonna happen regularly. You guys need to go to Hawaii and we'll take care of things here. And I was like, And so we were able to have peace of mind. And in that initial situation, the thing was solved in maybe twenty four hours and we were able to go about life. But if you're the kids, this process could go on for years, right?
Keith:Like it could go on. Yeah. And so what advice would you tell them in that process? Like, cause probably you spike your emotions at the beginning, yeah, of it. Yeah.
Keith:And so how would they normalize what that looks like?
David:Yeah, yeah. I think one thing is this is so important to like put your oxygen on first, right? Like take care of yourself. And so like we see these daughters who literally their kids are in college, they're kind of trying to figure out where their purpose is in life, and so they lean in hard to their parents and like to the exclusion of anything that's life giving to them. And then after a few months or a few years of doing that, they're just worn out.
David:And so the first thing that we tell people is like, what? Like figure out one thing that you can get back into that you can prioritize in your life that like gives you life or energy or connection. And so like, that's a huge thing that we kind of counsel families on. You don't have to be a martyr here. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
David:Yeah. So like hang in there, let's get a balanced approach to this. Let's like, you know, I tell families like it's really not about if you're there every day, it's about like a cadence to your connection with your parents. So as long as we can say like, you know, that grandson's gonna call every two weeks, that gives us a point to look forward to and a point to talk about after it happens. And so just creating like a cadence connection, and then bringing in a support around it to make it happen, it's super important.
Keith:Yeah. Boy, you haven't really had to go through this yet, Doug, have you?
Doug:No, thankfully.
Keith:Now, know I'm going to get real personal here. Are your parents open about this process? No. You guys
David:Doug's parents are amazing, by the way. I hope
Doug:I will be open to this process, but you don't know what you don't know. And so I'm just grateful that you guys are in business to help people. Right. And you're willing to share your story about how you do it.
Tracy:Right.
Keith:So I had a little health scare. I was taking a jujitsu class a couple weeks ago. Nice. And I bowed to finish it. Yeah.
Keith:And evidently, that little crystal somewhere in the inner ear set loose, and the world started spinning so fast that it didn't settle down. And so I ended up in the hospital for like five hours, didn't take care of. And so when Connie was there, I said, Let's just wait until we know what's going on, because they didn't diagnose it as vertigo right away. And so then once we were on the way home, we let the kids know what was going on. So then that was Sunday, And then Tuesday, I had a conversation with my daughter lecturing me that I waited too long for this conversation.
Keith:So these conversations can really happen at any time. Think the sooner you talk about- Does your dad like to make cookies?
David:Yeah.
Keith:The sooner you talk about who's the power of attorney, who's the healthcare power of attorney. We have wills. You know, the Psalm 9zero 10 says, The days in a man's life are seventy or eighty years, or kind of hitting that range, probably some things are going to start, we're going get a flat tire here or there. So the sooner you can be just objective and realistic about it, it would be my encouragement to not be afraid of the process because the more you can get, I think, family engaged and not intimidated by it, I think the more meaningful it's gonna be for everybody.
David:Yeah, and the more aligned your family will be in supporting what you want the last decade to look like. Right? Like, you may have a vision for what that looks like ideally, but if you don't tell anybody, it's really hard to make it happen. So Yes.
Tracy:What we started with, communication, communication. I think the generation, like my parents, you just didn't talk about money. You know, you didn't talk about, I don't know, kind of details sometimes, I feel like, or more my grandparents. But recently, you know, my dad's like, well, our financial people say, we need to let you know this, this, this, and this. So we've been having you know, my parents are in their eighties, some of those conversations.
Tracy:And I think in general, whether it's your health care wishes or, you know, all those things, the more you talk, the more the kids know, the more then my brother and I started having these conversations earlier, you know, and then maybe we're more in alignment later.
Keith:Yeah. I think for me, like, I don't know what it was, whether it was fourth grade when my teacher was reading Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, if it's the book or if there's a movie, I had this picture of that where the grandparents were living with Willy Wonka's, or not, Charlie, was it Charlie and the Chocolate Yeah. Yeah, and Charlie's grandparents were in the bed, head to toe. And as a young, probably a single digit kid, there was this old lady in my grandma and grandpa's house, and kinda put those things like, who is this lady? Why is she here?
Keith:And days gone by, there wasn't an option where you couldn't take care of someplace other than in your own house. And so in those days, I think the conversation was natural because the little kids are like, who are those old people? What are they doing here? Right? And so I think the more naturalized you can make it, whether it's just talking about somebody else that's having problems, What do you Mom and dad, what do you think about this?
David:Yeah. Well, it's amazing. Like a little help can go a long way. It's actually pretty surprising. Like just even somebody making sure the groceries are happy and the meals are consistent, like if somebody's getting good nutrition, like that actually makes a massive difference in their whole quality of life.
David:And often we see that lag off. Like, well, or dad don't really eat, or what they eat is just not super healthy. And so even simple things like that can make life a lot better.
Keith:We did notice that with my folks. When we would go down to Evansville, we would start checking. Yeah, sorry. Should take.
Tracy:We've heard some good ones.
Keith:Yeah. Yeah. So that that I I would say if you're wondering about mom and dad, probably looking in the refrigerator at the expiration dates, looking at the fenders on the car, see what's going on there. Those are some some just kind of natural things you can do to see if you're even clueless, because you can feel clueless if it jumps on you all at once, you didn't know it, but there's some there's some telltale signs you can look at. Yeah.
David:And it's amazing. Mom and dad can put on a pretty good show for their kids. Like, it's pretty impressive. Like, they can look all put together when the kids show up for a visit, and then they leave and it just falls apart. But the kids don't necessarily hear that, especially if there's one spouse who's a primary caregiver.
David:That spouse can just cover. They've, you know, they've loved their wife or their husband for their whole life, and they feel that it's their duty to just help support them, and they feel like they don't want to burn kids with it. So they just like shoulder it. And often it's that caregiving spouse that then has the setback and that we're trying to like really react to pull in help quickly because they were the mainstay care where they just shouldered it all for so many years. So it's hard to figure out those clues, but, you know, repetitive buying things or like maybe if your mom was always on top of something and it's just not quite what it used to be or the meal she prepared just isn't quite what she would normally have prepared.
David:Things like that can help, you know, clue you in. Or talk to their neighbors. Usually their neighbors know a lot. So they just see what's going on.
Keith:One of the you mentioned the spreadsheet that I did, that was helpful for me because I wasn't around mom a Yeah. And so I didn't, like if I was only there every ninety days, I didn't mentally remember how quickly she was repeating herself. But when I said, You know, when we were there this time, she repeated herself every 30 minutes, and then a year later, she's repeating herself every five minutes. I'm like, Oh, something's a little different here.
David:Right.
Keith:So even making physical notes, because even as our parents are aging, we are as well, and our recall may not be what it once was too. So having a physical document that helps you would be some suggestions I'd offer.
David:Yeah, for sure.
Keith:You guys have been really generous with your time. I hope you all have picked up some things to help your family navigate these unfortunate times in life. But you can do it with grace and encouragement, and we'll look forward to seeing you all next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend.