My Perfectly Balanced Life

What I’d like to do in this next series of blog posts is dip my toes into each of the chapters of my teaching memoir, Surfing the Waves of Alzheimer’s. In the book, I do tell our family’s story chronologically, but it’s organized around caregiving principles that I learned along the way. These became the titles of the chapters.

The first chapter sets the stage by introducing myself, Harvey, our families of origin, and our own nuclear family.

The overarching theme of the chapter is the balance we, as individuals and as a couple, achieved in our work and home lives. Much has been written about the work-life balance, and few are able to attain it, but because Harvey and I valued each other, our careers, and our family in the same manner, we were able to do it. Harvey was unusual that he didn’t have an overarching need to be “head of the household,” or the primary breadwinner. He viewed me as his equal in all things. For my part, I knew from early on that I wanted a career that mattered, and that I wanted a family. I came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, a time when women were told that we could be Superwomen. And I believed it. I just didn’t know how much easier and satisfying it would be if one married a man such as Harvey.

That was our story, “before.”

The lives of the individuals and families who are affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias have complete stories, too, from before the diagnosis. It is important to honor their prior lives and not see them as their current selves only.

In adult day care, respite care, and memory care units, families are often asked to create a “memory box” with photos and items from the loved one’s past. Some memory units have shadow boxes outside the doors of each resident, and the family is asked to fill it with items. This serves to help the resident identify which room is his or hers, and it also helps the staff appreciate who each of their residents are. It can be a point of entry for the staff to reach a resident in conversation.

Using the photos and items in Harvey’s memory box, my daughters and I would connect with him on visits, and I always hung his medical diploma in each of his rooms at care facilities.

Persons living with dementia were once engineers, bakers, physicians, homemakers, bankers, teachers, as well as husbands, wives, sisters, fathers, and friends. They were important people, gentle people, outrageous people, melancholy people, and adventurous people. They were individuals who contributed to their families and their communities.

We think of funerals as the time to honor those we loved, but we should honor them, too, while they are alive, by sharing stories and memories.

And it’s important to honor family caregivers’ lives before the diagnosis also. They, too, matter. They are more than the title “caregiver.”

Achieving balance as a physician, mother, business owner, and caregiver was important to me. I didn’t want to lose sight of who I was, and I didn’t want to lose sight of who my husband was.

The goal of my book is to help others reach a place of balance in their lives as well.