JBFCS: Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs

Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services

November 2007

By Susan Rosenthal, LCSW

Long Distance Caregiving for Elderly Parents

From the Alzheimer’s Dementia Foundation, I learned that despite our coast to coast relationship, my brother and I were indeed our parents’ long distance caregivers. Why did I think that one needed to live under the same roof to earn this label? The label mattered because all the stress, worry, responsibility, wear and tear we experienced now made sense. We had so much to learn.

I found myself following in the footsteps of my friends at shul who walked and more often crawled along this path before me. I watched them make the same trips home with ever increasing frequency; agonize and wrestle with the tough issues of respecting their parents’ fierce independence and determination to live in their own home on the one hand and building in care and safety on the other.

I worried about our health and well-being because we were not taking care of our own bodies and spirits. In the face of long periods of helplessness, self-care seemed like the last item on our "To Do" list.

However, I did feel supported and deeply blessed that I had discovered the great treasure and teachings of Torah just 7 years earlier. Torah, this big container or holding environment is the place where friends and I can wrestle, from the head and the heart, with how to act — where to find strength and meaning — when the right answers aren’t clear.

And, I continue to learn that despite the pain and exhaustion of this journey, there can be openings — moments of profound intimacy and/or reconciliation — which enable me to say it is a privilege.

Two years ago on Shavuot, the holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah, I waited in synagogue (not so patiently) for the piece of Torah I might personally receive that day. And then, just like that, I saw an image of my father as a young man carrying the Torah down from the top of Mount Sinai. Like Moses, his eyes were full of light, and I started to sob tears that cleanse the soul and open the heart. I realized that my father, by his lifelong example, had given my brother and I the Torah teaching of Hesed (Lovingkindness), his eternal gift to us. Once again, I found that the Source of Life had blessed me with a spiritual resource that lifted my spirits as I boarded the plane that very evening to fly to the other coast to tend to my increasingly frail parents.

The flights continue and so do the challenges and the gifts.

The above article can be found in the National Center for Jewish Healing publication, The Outstretched Arm: Caretaking, Volume 4, Issue 1, Winter 2002-3/5763. To order our publications, call 212.399.2685 ext 216.

These "Spirituality Notes" are excerpts from our monthly E-newsletter. Articles are © JBFCS Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs and may be reprinted free of charge as long as this credit line is included.

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