The first topic-Easing Transition Trauma, will be addressed in several posts. Today, we'll discuss some of the psychological aspects of transition. The first step in this journey is the dawning of recognition that change has come.
I will share an anecdote from real life with my grandparents. My grandparents had built their "dream home" in the late 1920's. My parents moved into their new house as well because my dad traveled and my mother was hesitant to be alone for weeks at a time.
For many, many years life was good. My grandmother reveled in her home-painting it, doing her own gardening and landscaping, cooking up fabulous meals on a coal stove every week for her extended family. When my grandfather wasn't working, he too worked around the house, fixing, tinkering, mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow.
Neighbors walked to the local grocery store, the butcher shop and the drugstore. If you were sick, the druggist delivered medicine to your home. The local dry cleaner picked up your clothes, the fruit peddler visited twice a week, the milkman came every other day. All of us kids played together from house to house, on porches and sidewalks, while mothers and grandmothers visited with one another.
But as the 1950's rolled on, change came in big ways. The main road near our home expanded, bringing more truck traffic and dangerous street crossings; kids and cats got hit by cars. Supermarkets opened and the little grocery stores disappeared.
The worst blow came when the house next door to us (the richest, fanciest house because it was on the corner lot) was demolished to make way for a used car lot. I will never forget my grandmother, tears streaming down her face, as she hung onto boards from the picket fence as it gave way to be replaced by a 6-foot chain link prison that enclosed one side of our house.
My grandma's world was coming down, just like the fence. She stubbornly refused to move from that house and her frustration and tears compounded as the changes came faster. She died from a stroke at age 78 without having to leave her beloved home.
On the other hand, my grandfather, ever practical, used the boards that my grandma saved from the neighbor's picket fence to patch places in our fence on the other side of the house. When he recognized that he needed help for 24-hours a day, he moved into the "old folks home" (today it would be called an assisted living community), his roommate was an old friend; he loved the ladies that came with cookies each afternoon and he passed away, relatively content, at age 93.
The difference: my grandmother was unwilling to admit that despite her best efforts, change was inevitable and her beloved house and neighborhood were rapidly disappearing. My grandfather adjusted his emotions and lifestyle to the new realities and lived a longer, more satisfied life.
Starting to recognize change is the first step in making a successful transition. Helping or prompting that recognition is something an interested person can do for a senior facing transition.
