ACA Blog

As counselors, we encounter challenges not only on a daily basis, but often from moment to moment as we work with our clients on issues that disrupt the client’s entire life – sometimes even shake their sense of self. While each symptom or issue is weighed differently within the lives of clients, the issue of death and dying seems to weigh heavily universally with those dealing with death or dying.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity of co-facilitating a program for older adults in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias and their caregivers. In addition, I have been facilitating a support group for just caregivers, and over the course of the summer have learned a great deal about the challenges caregivers of older adults face in regards to mental health and wellness. Furthermore, as my caseload grows as a mental health counselor working with older adults, I have had a growing number of experiences engaging with families and caregivers.

I visited a hospital twice this week: first to see the newborn son of my handyman and then to sing to my ninety year-old, dear friend as he drew his last breaths. Odd as it may seem to the reader, both were joyous events. The first because I glimpsed the future in the face of that baby boy as his teary mother cradled him close. The second because I reflected on all of the lives touched and forever changed by my friend of 35 years.

I have just scrapped the blog that I was going to post tonight. It seems superfluous compared to the picture of the face that I am looking at right now: a handsome, suntanned father of two girls that I know well; a devoted husband of a good friend of mine. He is 55. His blue eyes just sparkle under that big smile of his. I am reading his obituary.

Ever wonder what the profile of the person ‘least likely’ to seek out counseling is? Look at your client list. You will find that it is noticeably lacking in this population: the older, white male. Now get this: 73% of suicides are committed by, yeah, “older, white males.” Do they need us? You bet. Will they come to us? Probably not, even though their suicide rate is higher than older, black males and women put together.

In the 80’s, there was much ado about the baby boomers latest trend: cocooning. It was heralded that theirs would soon be a generation of stay-at homes, who wore sweat clothes and flip-flops instead of tuxedos and stilettos. No longer would they be out on the town, but instead at home watching movies on their VCR’s. And that is exactly what happened, but not just because the VCR had been invented, but frankly, because they were getting tired.

You don’t have to read War And Peace to know that Tolstoy sure had a handle on people. “Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself,” he said. In fact, I’ll bet he’d have made one heck of a counselor. He certainly had the patience. Scholars say that he endured a 48 year marriage known as, ‘one of the unhappiest in literary history.’ Interestingly, he would die of pneumonia at a train station the very night he was finally making his escape, both from the marriage and his aristocratic lifestyle.

Interesting ride in the elevator this morning. As the doors closed, I went to push the UP button, but the four year-old next to me beat me to it, hitting the DOWN one instead. We headed down. “DADDY!” she shrieked, “Why aren’t we going UP???” “Because you pushed the DOWN button,” he said with a grimace of embarrassment.

I swim ½ mile everyday at the local pool. In the roped off area, there is usually an elderly water aerobics class going on next to me. You know, white-haired, wrinklies flopping about on noodles or lifting Styrofoam dumb bells. Most are women and most spend the entire class talking, not exercising. But that doesn’t matter. These are the last legion of the upward and still mobile and I admire their perseverance.

I don’t plan to mince words with you as I begin my first blog for the ACA. Time is just too short, even if you’re young. Speaking of which, if you are around age 25, grab a camera right now and take a shot of yourself. Don’t worry how you look. Forget the makeup or what you’re wearing. Truth is, you are not really going to age much beyond today for the rest of your life, at least in your mind’s eye that is.