Self-Sufficiency in Senior Years: Thriving Solo in Your Golden Age
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As a former caretaker for my mom, who passed at age 93, and because I now live with ND Village residents over 65, I found this guest blog by Harry Cline very helpful. You may too. Clicking on colored phrases takes you to more information. Here it is . . .
Many seniors find themselves managing their daily lives with limited or no immediate family support nearby. This scenario can present various challenges, from maintaining a home to managing health and staying connected with the community. However, it also offers an opportunity to cultivate independence and resilience. This guide from Kathleen Glavich provides a range of strategies to effectively handle the demands of daily living, fostering a safe and satisfying lifestyle for seniors.
Establishing a Support Network
Building a strong support network is essential for those who might feel isolated due to the absence of close family members.
- Engage with local community centers: Many centers offer programs specifically for seniors, which can be a great way to meet peers and form supportive friendships.
- Leverage technology for connections: Video calls and social media platforms can help maintain old relationships and build new ones, even from a distance.
- Utilize local services and volunteers: Many communities have volunteer services that focus on assisting seniors, whether it’s through companionship or help with errands.
Getting Organized
Staying organized can significantly ease the daily life of seniors, making routines more manageable and less stressful.
- Create a daily routine: A structured daily plan helps keep track of tasks and appointments, reducing anxiety and increasing productivity.
- Use labeling systems: Label storage areas, containers, and even settings on appliances for ease of use.
- Digitize important documents: Keeping digital copies of important documents ensures they are safe and easily accessible, and it’s always good to review them periodically to ensure they are up-to-date.
- Downsize possessions: Less clutter means fewer things to manage, which can simplify living arrangements and reduce housekeeping efforts.
- Maintain a dedicated contacts list: Keep a regularly updated list of contacts for emergency services ensuring help is always just a call away.
Health Management Essentials
Maintaining health is a key concern for seniors, especially when they are managing it on their own.
- Regular medical check-ups: Keeping up with doctor appointments can help prevent the escalation of health issues.
- Adopt a well-balanced diet: Nutrition is crucial at this stage of life, and many local programs offer meal delivery services tailored to senior dietary needs.
- Exercise regularly: Physical activity can be tailored to individual ability levels, and many community centers provide classes designed for seniors.
Mastering Daily Logistics
Daily life logistics can pose a significant challenge without the immediate help of family.
- Utilize delivery services: Groceries, medications, and other essentials can be delivered to your doorstep, reducing the need to go out.
- Arrange for transportation: Many communities offer senior-specific transportation options for shopping, appointments, and social outings.
- Embrace technology for reminders: Use devices and apps to remind you of daily tasks, appointments, and medication schedules.
Enhancing Home Safety
A safe home environment is crucial to prevent accidents and ensure that seniors can manage on their own confidently.
- Install safety modifications: Features such as grab bars in the bathroom, non-slip rugs, and proper lighting can prevent falls.
- Regular home maintenance: Ensure that all home fixtures and utilities are in working order to avoid unexpected issues.
- Use emergency alert systems: Wearable devices that alert emergency services with the push of a button can provide peace of mind for both the senior and their distant family members.
By taking proactive steps to build a supportive community network, prioritizing health, and streamlining daily tasks, seniors can confidently navigate their day-to-day challenges. This not only ensures a higher quality of life but also reinforces a sense of autonomy and empowerment.
Inspire your spiritual journey with Kathleen Glavich – where faith and insight come together.
To stay young at heart, laugh a lot. Here is a video of humorous quotes from famous people. Enjoy it!
• Can you add other tips for seniors?
Autumn Leaves, A Spectacular Show
Each fall we are treated to glorious sights as leaves die in flames of glory. This is another ingenious gift from our artistic Creator, one that mirrors God’s beauty. As I scan landscapes rich with gold, red, yellow, and orange trees, I can exclaim with poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, “O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!” This is the season for leaf peepers. Once when I was a speaker in Vermont, at the peak of nature’s fall displays, no hotel room was vacant! I had to stay at someone’s home on Lake Champlain.
Religious Significance of Fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Spring and Fall,” begins, “Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?” It ends “It is Margaret you mourn for.” The dying of leaves reminds us that we too face mortality. Our fate is connected to two trees. Saint Irenaeus said, “As through a tree we were made debtors to God, so through a tree we receive cancellation of our debt.” The tempting tree in Eden gave way to the saving tree on Calvary.
My Leaf Education
I was introduced to the many varieties of leaves when we were to collect them for a high school biology class project. My mom knew I didn’t have the star-shaped sweet gum leaf. When she spotted one, to pluck it, she had my dad stop the car at the side of the road and she climbed onto it!
I carefully placed each leaf on white tagboard, traced around it, leaving a narrow border and cut it out. Then I swathed the sample in plastic wrap. My leaf album earned an A+. Linnaeus would be proud. Later, as a teacher, I used some of those preserved leaves to decorate bulletin boards.
Note: There are three basic kinds of leaves, simple (a single undivided leaf), compound (a leaf divided into leaflets attached at the stem either in a row or radiating from one point), and needlelike.
Trees
Who is not familiar with Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees”? To refresh your memory, here it is:
Someone drew these lessons from trees: Stand tall and proud, go out on a limb, remember your roots, drink plenty of water, be content with your natural beauty, and don’t forget to enjoy the view!
A lesson from the stately redwood trees: How do these enormous trees that stretch into the sky remain standing? Their roots are intertwined. Through this mingling of roots, they also share water and nutrients. They teach us the value of cooperation and mutual support.
Besides providing us with beautiful scenery, nuts, oxygen, and shade, trees help us to play. Did you ever build a treehouse, swing from vines, climb a tree, picnic under a tree, or hide your face against a tree trunk, counting to a hundred for a game of hide-and-seek?
Soon we will be moving evergreen trees into our houses and decorating them as Christmas trees that add enjoyment and beauty to the celebration of this feast.
• What is your favorite kind of tree?
• Was a certain tree special to you growing up? Is one special now?
One of my favorite melodies is “Autumn Leaves.” Here is a version with lyrics sung with Nat King Cole’s velvety voice.
Bees, Hives, and Honey
A beekeeper recently gave me a jar of honey. I can see why honey is called liquid gold. It’s beautiful as it streams down from a spoon, and it wonderfully satisfies my sweet tooth. This gift made me curious about bees, so I googled them. Today I share with you some things I learned.
- There are more than 20,000 species of bees.
- A hive can hold 20,000 drones.
- Worker bees are all female, but only the queen bee can mate and reproduce.
- Female honeybees have baskets on their hind legs to collect pollen.
- Only the female worker bees have stingers, so they protect the hive, not the drones.
- Bees have five eyes: two large ones and three small ones in between them.
- A queen honeybee can lay over 2,000 eggs in a day.
- After mating with the queen, the drone dies.
- Bees have combs on their forelimbs to clean their antennae.
- Bees sleep when they are tired.
- Bees can only sting once and then die; wasps can sting many times.
- When a hive divides, the new queen and followers “swarm” and look for a home.
Bees in History
- Beekeeping has been practiced at least since the times of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.
- In Egyptian mythology, bees grew from the tears of the sun god Ra when they landed on the desert sand.
- The honeybee was the royal symbol for pharaohs from 3000 BC and 350 BC.
- As a baby, Zeus was fed milk and honey.
- A custom was to “tell the bees” when someone died. After Queen Elizabeth II died, the royal beekeeper informed the bees of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House. He explained, “You knock on each hive and say, ‘The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you.’ “
Catholic Symbolism
Bees became a symbol for Our Lady because of their diligence and good work. They also symbolized her virginity because the worker bees don’t reproduce.
Providentially, World Bee Day is May 20. May is Mary’s month.
Because honey is sweet, it became a symbol for St. Ambrose and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose words were as sweet as honey.
According to a legend, during the conclave for Pope Urban VIII, a swarm of bees flew into the Vatican seen as a divine sign. He made the bee his personal emblem.
The Paschal Candle and other candles used in the liturgy must be at least 51% beeswax. This is because wax produced by the honeybee is considered the sweetest and purist, the most appropriate for symbolizing the humanity of Jesus.
(My mother would use only beeswax when she decorated Easter eggs.)
Hexagonal cells in a honeycomb are made from wax secreted and chewed by the bees. The cells are for storing honey and for baby bees to develop.
Why “Busy as a Bee”?
Bees in a hive do the same task all day long. Worker bees my fly maybe ten miles a day as they gather pollen and nectar and bring it to the hive over and over. A bee can visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey.
My Sad Encounter with Bees
My dad hung a tire from the large tree on our land in the country so we kids could swing. This swing was not always fun. One afternoon it was like the Trojan Horse. We were taking turns being pushed on the swing, blissfully unaware of the ruckus this would cause. Our joy ended abruptly. My brother, who was four or five, stood screaming with his fist clenched. When he uncurled it, inside lay a black and yellow bee.
Suddenly, all of us were yelling, jumping, running around the yard, and rolling on the ground as if performing a wild dance. My father rolled up newspaper and began swatting us with it. Little did we know that the tire was suspended over an underground nest of bees. They viewed our stamping back and forth on it as an attack. As we pushed each other on the swing, the bees had stealthily crawled up inside our pant legs and then stung.
We swiftly packed up and went home. Dad was stung next to his eye. I suffered the most wounds—six of them. We won the battle of the bees though, with the help of an ally. Mike, an elderly neighbor, poured kerosene into the nest and burned them out.
Warning: Do not kill bees. We need them to pollinate and so provide our fruit, vegetables, and nuts!
The video below contains more interesting information about bees. Although it is meant for children, it is worthwhile for adults too.
• What has been your experience with bees?
Sky Views: God’s Masterpiece
The other night the northern United States was treated to a rare Aurora Borealis performance. I looked out about 10:00 p.m., but the sky was black. The next day Facebook was jam-packed with photos that luckier people had taken of the gorgeous sky scenes, like this one by Ingrid Kanics:
I was jealous. So was someone else who posted this humorous picture:
To console myself, I reflected on other magnificent sights in the sky that I had witnessed. No, I didn’t see the meteor showers this year, but years ago I counted 86 meteors in the Leonid shower over South Euclid. Three times as I flew, I spotted a pilot’s halo or pilot’s glory. This is a miniature shadow of the plane riding over the clouds and encircled by a rainbow. I learned the name for this phenomenon while reading a novel in which the heroine saw one.
I’ve seen lovely plain rainbows, even double ones.
From my third-floor balcony, I see breathtaking sunrises . . .
and sunsets both at home
and from my sister’s Florida condo.
This year I was able to watch the solar eclipse from our courtyard.
I also see slivers of moons, half moons, and full moons.
Then there are the brilliant stars…
Several varieties of clouds enchant us, like cirrus, stratus, and cumulus. Puffy white clouds are beautiful.
Threatening clouds are awesome too.
Sometimes sunlight breaks through clouds in a glorious way. Still, Vincent van Gogh said, “I never tire of the blue sky.”
The skies above are thrilling to behold. No wonder people conceived of heaven being “up there.” If God made our temporary home so wonderful and entertaining, imagine the astounding sights that await us in our eternal home!
Here is a version of “For the Beauty of the Earth” with a different melody than the one I’m familiar with. It is accompanied by lovely photos. Click and enjoy!
https://youtu.be/xlBkpAm3fhw?si=XSsbecTOl3S50lib
• What marvelous skies have you been privileged to see?
The Rosary, a Lifeline
October is known as the month of the Rosary, no doubt because October 7 is the feast of the Holy Rosary. The feast originated with the Battle of Lepanto when, against all odds, Christians overcame the Muslim forces attacking Europe—accredited to Christians praying the rosary. (Hmm. What would happen if all Catholics prayed the Rosary to vanquish terrorist groups?)
The rosary is associated with Catholics as much as the Mass is. It hangs in our cars, and our hands hold it in the coffin. Martin Luther, a former Catholic, did away with many Catholic things, but not the rosary. He prayed it every day until he died. The composer Hadyn prayed it whenever he got composer’s block. It was Pope St. John Paul II’s favorite prayer. After 9/11, he encouraged praying it for peace.
When the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima, Portugal, she, too, advised us to pray the rosary for peace. To those who think that after the reforms of Vatican II, the rosary is something to be thrown out the window, think again!
The Rosary is a highly scriptural prayer. We pray two ways during the rosary: We say the traditional formula prayers, which are rooted in the Bible (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be), but at the same time we ponder the mysteries of Jesus, one mystery per decade (set of ten beads). I tell children that this takes practice, like mastering patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. The repetitions of the Hail Marys is like soothing background music to our thoughts. (So soothing that the rosary can function as a remedy for sleepless nights, more effective than counting sheep, the Calm app, or lavender oil).
The Rosary is known as a Marian prayer because we primarily honor our Blessed Mother by praying fifty-three Hail Marys. The Rosary has been compared to a garland of roses we present to her.
I also ask the children how they feel when someone says something nice about their mother. Then I comment that likewise Jesus is pleased when we praise his mother. We Sisters of Notre Dame (Our Lady) pray the Rosary every day.
Rosaries can be beautiful crystal ones or homemade ones. There are also single decade rosaries. I have one of these made from crushed rose petals. Some people pray on ten-beaded bracelets or rings. Lacking any of these, we can always pray on our hands, which conveniently have ten fingers!
The largest rosary is at a shrine in Windsor, Ohio. It is made of foot-high lamps near the tallest statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is 50-feet high.
Variations: You can make up your own mysteries, such as the miracle mysteries or the parable mysteries. You can also stay mindful of the mystery by inserting in the Hail Marys words that refer to it. For example, for the Annunciation you might pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace, to whom the Angel Gabriel came, the Lord . . .”
You can also meditate on mysteries from your own life!
In case you need a refresher on how to pray the Rosary, here is a simple diagram.
By the way, the rosary developed over the years. The legend that Mary personally handed one to St. Dominic began because the Dominicans were chief promoters of the rosary.
Here is one of the sites where you can pray the rosary along with others: https://www.comepraytherosary.org/
• What rosary has special meaning for you?
• When has praying the rosary been a comfort or joy for you?
