You may know that the Better People Care “tag line”, or motto, is: “Helping Older Folks Live Fully in Their Own Homes.”
To be sure, sometimes “their own homes” refers to one of the senior facilities in which folks now live.
But moreso, “their own homes” means the homes in which they live within the community. Homes they often live in with spouses, or adult children, or homes in which they live alone.
We are happy to bring hope, age-specialist care, and dementia-specialist care to folks living in either situation.
But when we are able to help folks remain in their own homes in the community for longer, we take great reward.
You see, there is tremendous value in a person’s ability to “putter” in their own home. To wake up when their body is ready to wake up. To slowly get up and get going with their day. To maybe “putter” in their bathroom as they enjoy looking through a drawer and notice the variety of jewelry there; jewelry they may have forgotten was there, even though they looked at that same jewelry just yesterday.
Then folks may move to their kitchen, where they fix a bit of breakfast, and putter while rearranging a few items in their pantry.
The doorbell might ring, and after they answer and close the door, they notice their shelf with photo albums. They go sit on the floor near this shelf, and happily spend the next while looking back through photos.
They realize that their back is getting a little stiff, so they get up, and see the computer. They sit down at their computer desk, and clumsily but contentedly navigate their way through reading the ads that pop up on their computer.
After a while, they realize they’re hungry, so return to the kitchen for a bite to eat. They become distracted by the messy arrangement of their vitamin bottles so they putter as they tidy them up. They get a bite to eat, and notice the book on their coffee table, so they head to the couch and spend some time skimming through the book.
When an older person moves into a senior community, the power of putter is mostly lost. They no longer have the muscle memory of how they moved around their home, how they moved from the bed to the bathroom, for example. Their cans of food and boxes of crackers have been moved to a pantry they no longer recognize, or no longer have. Their bookshelves are now set against the wall that is on the north side of their room, underneath a window, rather than against the west wall with the picture of the church they attended all throughout childhood.
While moving into a senior community sometimes becomes the best decision, it is important to be keenly aware of what is lost when that move happens. To be sure, one of the greatest losses is the privilege of putter…being able to putter the way through the day in your own home with your own things.
We’ll continue to work hard to help folks live fully in their own homes for as long as possible. And when a move becomes necessary, we’ll do our best to enable the power of putter to the highest level.
It is our honor to help folks live fully in their own homes.
Jill
©Jill Couch
