In support of aging and caregiving

There are three kinds of people: people who are receiving caregiving, people who are caregivers, and people who will need caregiving in the future, Ellen Rand said, citing Rosalind Carter. “That kind of covers all of us, and we all need support.”

Ms. Rand, who lives in Teaneck, is a member of the advisory board of Age-Friendly Teaneck, an initiative whose mission is to “make Teaneck a great place to grow old, as well as a great place to grow up,” and to “make the community more livable for people of all ages while increasing awareness of the township’s rapidly growing older population,” according to its website, agefriendlyteaneck.org. She is also the author of “Last Comforts: Notes from the Forefront of Late Life Care” and was a hospice volunteer with Teaneck’s Holy Name Medical Center from 2010 to 2019.

Ms. Rand will moderate a program called “Caregiving: The Labor of Love” at the Teaneck Public Library on May 26. (See below.) The evening, which is part of the library’s “Tuesday Tips” series, will feature a conversation with Brian Morton, author of “Tasha: A Son’s Memoir,” about caregiving, aging, and family.

The library is hosting the discussion in collaboration with Age-Friendly Teaneck in observance of Older Americans Month during May.

Mr. Morton grew up in Teaneck and cared for his mother, Tasha, there in her later years. The book recounts the family’s struggles during the last several years of her life.

“Tasha was one in a million,” Ms. Rand said. She taught in the Teaneck public schools for years and served on the town’s Board of Education after she retired. “Tasha died in 2016, and Mr. Morton wrote the book several years later.”

The book is “funny, it’s tragic, and it’s heartbreaking,” she continued. “He talks about what it was like as a caregiver and as a son.”

The conversation will focus both on Mr. Morton’s memoir and on his perceptions after the book was published — “on how his attitudes may have changed or how his perspectives may have changed in the years since.” Ms. Rand lost her own parents in 2000 and 2005, and “your perception and your insights, they change over the years,” she said.

Ms. Rand became a hospice volunteer because, “after my mother died, I thought hospice was the best thing that ever could have happened to my family,” she said. Staff members and volunteers “were there, not only for her, but for the family.

“It’s tough going through these things, and I felt that there were times when I didn’t know what the next steps were, or what to do, or anything, and they were just a godsend.” As a volunteer, Ms. Rand spent time with patients and caregivers. “It was an amazing experience.”

Ms. Rand’s background is in journalism. She noticed that patients often used hospice services late in the end-of-life process. “We had been fortunate in my family because my mother was able to have hospice care for a long time. And the benefits are really so fantastic that if you only have them for a week or two weeks, which I was seeing, it’s just so sad to me.” She started wondering why that was the case and ultimately wrote “Last Comforts” about the end-of-life care landscape and her experience as a hospice volunteer.

Ms. Rand and Mr. Morton also will talk about the emotional toll that caregiving takes — “about how difficult it is, how isolated you can feel when you’re in the midst of it, and how you have all these mixed feelings, and what to do with them,” she said.

The discussion will address some of the practical difficulties that caregivers face. “One of the issues Brian writes about is how do you find good support? How do you find people you can trust to take care of your loved ones? And the fact of the matter is, the resources are still kind of scattershot.”

Ms. Rand actually sees the emotional components and the practical components as related. The practical challenges can “create all kinds of anxiety when you’re dealing with a loved one who has physical and emotional difficulties,” she said. “You want to do your best, and sometimes you don’t think you’re doing quite enough.” She hopes the discussion will provide important support for caregivers. “Sometimes you think that you’re alone and so many other people are going through the same kinds of things.”

The Bright Side Family, a Teaneck based organization that offers affordable senior housing and community outreach, works with the township to coordinate the Age-Friendly Teaneck initiative. The organization’s goal is to help people “age with dignity,” EJ Vizzi, Bright Side’s director of senior programs, said. “To age in a way that they’re thriving and not just getting by.

“Bright Side’s community outreach focuses on health and wellness as well as educational programming for seniors and for younger people,” Ms. Vizzi continued. “We are focused on seniors, but the concept of everyone is aging and everyone should be preparing for when they become older is often something that we have to educate on, because if you’re not preparing for your later years when you’re in your working years, at 40, 50, 60, then you’re not setting yourself up for success in your 60s through your 90s.”

The organization also hosts a variety of social activities, including intergenerational ones. “Age-friendly communities benefit everyone, not just the older population,” Ms. Vizzi said. “Seniors have lived experience. They’ve lived through a lot of things. They have the life stories. I think a lot of younger people, yes, they’re still well connected, but oftentimes they feel that what’s happening to them is only happening to them, in their generation, when people also faced a lot of those challenges in the past.

“Older adults may have a different perspective,” on some of those challenges. “Developing these relationships can be enriching for everybody.”

Mr. Morton’s talk is geared to caregivers, and Ms. Vizzi expects that it will attract older adults who may be caring for a spouse as well as the younger demographic of adult children caring for a parent. She hopes participants will “feel informed and empowered about how they can approach this facet of their life.” And like Ms. Rand, she hopes it will help caregivers feel less alone, less like they are “in a silo. We want them to know that through stories and shared experiences, they can lean on others, they can recognize that there’s a village around them that can support some of the challenges they’re facing.”

And she expects that the talk will really strike a chord. “Brian writes in a fun, eccentric, casual way that we felt can really resonate with people,” she said. “He shares his experience caring for Tasha as she developed dementia, as she had to consider moving out of her home, as she had to consider life beyond what she understood it to be. What’s especially poignant and humorous about the book is that she has always had a larger-than-life personality. And so, dealing with letting some of her independence go, she would never do it in a way that would be what’s considered cookie cutter.

“Brian writes about the ways she approached it, the way he had to work around it, and really, some of the systemic challenges that older adults face when they’re coming up to this chapter of their life. And he writes about some of the challenges he faced and about some of the things he learned that he wished he had known earlier. Hindsight is 20/20. He didn’t realize that those were some of the things he’d have to worry until he was holding the bull by the horns.

“That’s also a running theme with Bright Side and Age-Friendly Teaneck -—that people don’t know what they don’t know until they have to face it in a crisis moment.

“Healthy aging isn’t only about medical care,” Ms. Vizzi concluded. “It’s also about access to resources and staying engaged in the community, maintaining that social connection.”

What: “Caregiving: The Labor of Love,” featuring Brian Morton, author of “Tasha: A Son’s Memoir,” in conversation with Ellen Rand

Who: Hosted by the Teaneck Public Library in collaboration with Age-Friendly Teaneck

Where: At the Teaneck Public Library

When: May 26; refreshments at 6 p.m., presentation at 6:30