Caring for Aging Parents with Honor and Reverence

By Shelley Weinreb
Marketing Coordinator
CHAI: Comprehensive Housing Assistance, Inc.

From baby carriage to wheelchair, life has a way of coming full circle. We start out being totally dependent on our parents and often end up being totally dependent on our children. Many ‘baby boomers’ dealing with aging parents must balance functioning as their parents’ decision maker with according their parents the honor and respect they deserve.

Judaism places a high priority on honoring parents. “Honor thy father and mother” is one of the most well known of the Ten Commandments. The Jewish tradition teaches that the mitzvah includes both honoring and revering.

To honor our parents means to care for their needs, such as:

• bring them food
• prepare meals
• do grocery shopping
• manage the payment of bills
• handle banking
• take them to the doctor

To revere our parents means to distinguish clearly between who is the parent and who is the child, knowing that the two are not equal. Examples include:

• not raising your voice or speaking disrespectfully
• not contradicting a parent (even if they’re obviously wrong)
• not sitting in their designated place unless first getting permission
• not waking a resting parent

A story is told in the Talmud of the son of a jeweler who refused to disturb his sleeping father when representatives from the Temple in Jerusalem came to his door, wishing to buy precious gems for the High Priest’s breastplate. The key to the family’s diamond vault was under the father’s pillow and the son would not wake his father, even at the cost of losing a fortune in diamond sales. The next year, a rare and valuable red heifer was born to a cow in the jeweler’s herd, and representatives once again came from the Temple to pay a large sum for its purchase. This time, the father was not sleeping, and the previous year’s loss was more than fully recouped. The Talmud praises the son’s selfless act as a laudable example of honoring one’s father and mother.

The Torah promises long life as a reward to those who honor their parents. Perhaps one reason is that caring for parents — especially when they are elderly – can take up a lot of time. By adding extra years to a person’s life, G-d “compensates,” so to speak for the time spent.

Of course, just doing the mitzvah is its own reward. After a lifetime of our parents giving to us, it feels good to give back to them.

For more information on CHAI’s many services available for seniors, call 410-500-5315.

If you’d like to volunteer for CHAI’s Northwest Neighbors Connecting volunteer support network for seniors, call 410-500-5307.

Techno-Savvy Grandparents Keep in Touch

By Irene Kushner
Support Services Coordinator
Service Coordination, Jewish Community Services

Last year, the nation marked the 65th birthday of the first Baby Boomers.  The rate at which this age group has adapted to technology is understandably lagging behind the generations who have come after them. But the rate at which their children and grandchildren are using technology is climbing very fast.

Today, millions of American families are separated by distances that are too wide to make day-to-day grand-parenting possible.   Just look around.  How many of your friends, colleagues or neighbors live in families with three generations present? How many grandparents live near their children and grandchildren?

The more family trees branch off — as children head out of state to college, Boomers relocate for work, and grandparents move to warmer areas — the harder it is to stay in touch.  Geographical distances strain the real life, face-to-face relationships that we value.   It’s very easy to take important relationships and slide them to the side if they are not in front of you as often as those on your computer or phone.

Many grandparents will tell you they’ll do everything they possibly can to communicate with their grandkids.  Most Boomers understand they must jump on the Facebook/Skype/texting bandwagon, or be left permanently out of the loop.  Grandparents are using their own ingenuity to keep their grandchildren emotionally close, and more and more are embracing the new technology.  They reap enormous emotional benefits through online communication with family and friends.  The Internet uplifts their spirits and creates new life for them, making them feel young again. Video conferencing is the most satisfying experience that enables seniors to see and talk with their loved ones in real time.

Here’s what seniors are saying:

“I’ve got 2 grandkids. If I send them a text, they will respond 10 times quicker than they’ll respond to a voice mail.”

“I can log on to Facebook to see what my grandkids are doing through their posts.  I love seeing pictures of their activities and travels.”

“You can write messages any time to your grandchildren without disturbing them.”

“I get a thrill out of impressing my granddaughter with my technical know-how.”

We grew up with lined paper and the heft of a fine writing instrument.  But now there is an entire generation of kids growing up who have never experienced what life was like before social networking sites.  There are a million arguments for completely ignoring Facebook and other social media:

“Why can’t they just…?”

“What was wrong with…?”

“Hand-written this or that…”

And nobody under the age of 40 cares about any of it.  None of it matters anymore.  We are old dogs who must betray the saying and learn new tricks. We must commit to keeping up with the way that communication happens today, or else it will be happening among all the people we care about, without us.

Do you think it’s the adult children’s responsibility to make sure seniors or grandparents don’t feel they are left behind, to set up the various communication lines and make it happen?  Sure, it takes time and a little patience to do this.  But isn’t it also one way of showing that we value and care for our elders, and that we want our children to enjoy special relationships with their grandparents?

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