What do you value in life?  We tend to ask ourselves that question when we are setting goals as each new year begins.   January is a perfect time to make plans for reaching our goals based on what we value. At our Lady-Links planning sessions, we set goals for our visits with the women who are in various stages of cognitive decline that live  in our retirement community.  We believe that these ladies we call dear friends deserve to be a part activities that create meaning in their lives and to find reasons to laugh, rejoice, and love.

Lady-Links value our relationships with our dear friends and find that our visits enrich our lives as well as theirs.

To demonstrate what we value in the visits with our dear friends, we focus on several areas: Communication, Collaboration, and Commitment.

Communication:

We begin each visit with a smile and keep that friendly body language going throughout the visit.  We’ve found that even when our dear friends don’t fully understand what we’re saying, they completely understand what a smile means!

Collaboration:

We value team work.  We work together as a team to complete a project or activity. That way, everyone contributes and feels successful.

Commitment:

Lady-Links are committed to bringing love and laughter into the lives of their dear friends. We do this by actively listening, supporting and respecting each other regardless of cognitive ability, and by expressing kindness.

We are planning for a very successful year with visits filled with what we value most!  We know it will be a very good year!

As we say good-bye to this year, we have to agree that it was good.  Although we suffered the loss of several we love, we know that our lives are richer and fuller simply because we were friends.  We’ve learned that without love and friendship, life isn’t so good.  We are Lady-Links,  and we visit ladies in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline engaging them in activities they enjoy.  That’s a good thing for them and for us.  The bonds of friendship are strong, and we all benefit from these special relationships.  We hope you will keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we plan for the next year for ways to continue to add love and laughter to the lives of those special ladies we call dear friends.

Hope you enjoy a look back at a few of our pictures from this year:

Events

Visits

Love and Laughter Shared

Encouragement from Friends, Family and our entire Retirement Community:

Yes, it was a VERY good year.

We look forward each year to changing our song sheets from our usual music to Christmas music at our visits with our dear friend who was once a music teacher.  She has the bells and has taught us how to use them.  Our weekly visits to her are filled with lots of laughter because we enjoy this so much.  It doesn’t matter if we strike the bell at the wrong time or sing out of tune….we are making a “joyful noise” and having fun doing it.

It seems that the month of December finds us all in good spirits, ready for a special time.  The Christmas carols and holiday songs add to the festivities of the season, and are something we look forward to with great anticipation.

Our dear friend is excellent at what she does…playing the piano and leading our efforts as we strike the bells and sing.

Music and Christmas.  Plenty of opportunities to share the love and laughter that so easily flows during our Lady-Links visits.

At our Lady-Links Christmas Party, we knew how to have fun!  There was plenty of love and laughter shared with our dear friends who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  Engaging our dear friends in an enjoyable time was easy to do because we had delicious refreshments and delightful activities available.

In addition to enjoying themselves, we wanted another purpose for our dear friends.   We wanted them (as well as ourselves) to feel a part of the Spirit of Giving.  To do that, we planned activities that were meaningful and easy to manage.  We chose to make simple Christmas crafts to give away to residents who live in our community’s memory care and assisted living housing.

These “peel and stick” ornaments were easy to make.  Our Lady-Links craft coordinator placed a completed craft as an example on each table, along with packets of the craft ornaments that needed assembly.

That made it easy for our dear friends, surrounded by Lady-Links and their guests, to assemble the ornaments as a team.  We all felt like we were contributing to an effort of giving that would benefit someone else.  There’s a good feeling when we give to others of our time and talent, and our dear friends were able to make that positive connection as we talked about how the recipients of our handiwork would enjoy getting these cute crafts.

Our party included singing  familiar Christmas carols and songs, accompanied by a pianist who gave of her time to play for us.

We kept our party to an hour so our dear friends would not get tired or lose interest.  We had a delightful time and felt that our two-fold purposes were met.

Games like Scrabble can help maintain a range of skills for people with Alzheimer’s and related types of dementia.  From cognitive interaction to social interaction, Scrabble can lead to building self-esteem and value in the lives of those who play.

If you have a friend or loved one in cognitive decline who played Scrabble as a child or young person, you should encourage that person to play again by offering to play with them.  “Oh, it’s too difficult,” you say.    No it’s not.  Here’s the SECRET.  Scrabble the way we play it is FUN!

Our Simplified Version:

1.  Just make words.  Don’t count the points underneath each letter.

2.  Connect the words according to the Scrabble rules, but help each other by suggesting what letters are needed.

3.  The first one to play all her letter tiles is the winner.

When you play that way, it’s FUN!

For our weekly Scrabble visit, we play at a leisurely pace.  We talk about the words we make, and even share stories that those words inspire.  Much of the time we make words consisting of two, three or four letters.  But that’s OKAY.  It’s not about setting records…it’s about having FUN and we do that!

Games such as Scrabble that our dear friends played earlier in their lives (and that we’ve modified) and are continuing to play today help them feel like themselves again.  They feel a sense of independence and a sense of accomplishment. And….you know what I’m going to say…We’re all having FUN!

Faith is an important component of  life.  It brings hope and peace as well as a sense of purpose to us.  As Lady-Links, we’ve discovered that making faith-based crafts is a way to encourage our dear friends with Alzheimer’s and other related types of dementia, and to help them feel a sense of God’s presence in their lives.

Our dear friends may be past the point of visiting church with their families or even watching a sermon on TV.  But they love being involved in activities that remind them of their childhood Sunday School class or worship service.  It gives them a sense of being connected spiritually with those who care.

We are blessed to live in a retirement community that has many opportunities to express one’s faith.  The faith-based crafts we make are distributed by our Director of Pastoral Ministries to those who attend vespers or to those who are in need of a pastoral visit.  They bring joy to the lives of those who receive them, and give us joy knowing that what we are making will fill such a need.

When we made the Jesus is the Sweetest Name craft, our dear friend began singing “Jesus Loves Me” without any prompting from any of us.  Of course we all joined in, and it was a precious time knowing that we helped her connect to a very special time in her life.

Faith can be a source of strength and hope. By making these crafts, our dear friends are given a tangible reminder of all that faith can bring.

As words and cognitive abilities fade, symbols of faith can still prompt memories and responses.  Making, holding or touching our faith-based crafts provide a unique way of communicating about spiritual issues that can soothe the soul when more traditional ways like listening to a sermon can’t.

Helping provide such spiritual connections bring joy to both our lives and to the lives of our dear friends.  The memories of faith-based activities can transcend time with just a little help.  Why not explore this issue with your loved one?  It can be a source of comfort for you both.

Thanksgiving is exactly that…giving thanks.  But how do you do that when circumstances aren’t so great?  As Lady-Links, we’ve learned that gratitude is an attitude we can choose.  We’ve found many reasons to choose to be thankful when visiting our dear friends, and we are encouraged to see that our attitude of gratitude sets the tone for the entire visit.

The dear friends we visit each week are in various stages of dementia.  Their lives and the lives of their families and caregivers are forever changed.  Yet, we see something good and positive each time we visit one of these precious ladies.  Why?  Because we believe that what we are doing is beneficial, and we choose to look for something, no matter how small, to recognize as an area for which we can be thankful.

After all, what’s the result of not choosing gratitude?  It’s ingratitude, and that’s the first step down a road of bitterness, sadness and discouragement.  And what good comes from that kind of thinking?  Here’s several reasons the Lady-Links have found for giving thanks:

As we work together on a craft or a project, we help our dear friends feel a sense of belonging.  We’re all a part of something that we’re doing together!  And that’s a reason to give thanks!  Everyone contributes to the finished product.

Our crafts are given away to others, so we help our dear friends feel a sense of altruism.  That’s just a fancy way of saying that it feels good to give something that will bring happiness into the lives of others.  Our dear friends understand that and feel good that they are involved in purposeful activity.

We share stories and memories of Thanksgivings past.  Delicious feasts…with all the trimmings…how we helped our mothers in the kitchen.  This promotes a sense of connection between us, and we find ourselves laughing as we describe our attempts to make pumpkin pie or stuff a turkey. Or even try to remember the Mayflower and the activities we did as children to mark the history of this occasion. Our dear friends are able to share in this type of communication because we are careful to talk about memorable events in the past…not what happened recently.

In other words, we focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t do.  We can still love and laugh, and we can still enjoy friendship.  And that’s the best part of thanksgiving!  Being together!

Thanksgiving can be tough on families of those with Alzheimer’s and related dementia.  They need our encouragement, thoughts and prayers.  If you know such a family, how can you be a blessing in their lives?  Your offer of a visit to their loved one just might be the thing they need most to put them in a thankful mood when circumstances around them seem bleak.  Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be celebrated just one day a year.  Let’s make it a lifestyle event!

Individual preferences, interests, hobbies, and stage of cognitive impairment are all factors in planning for visits with our dear friends. We visit one person at a time, engaging her in specific activities that she enjoys.  As a result, when we find something that is “unique” to that dear friend, we take note of it.

One of our dear friends is a former music teacher who grew up in a household of musically talented siblings and parents.  At our visits with her, we play the resonator bells while she plays the piano.  We play and sing familiar songs, one of which is “Let There Be Peace On Earth.”  Each time we play that song, our dear friend tells the story of when she and her brother would argue as children, their mother would begin playing “Let There Be Peace On Earth” on the piano.  That was a signal for our dear friend and her brother to straighten up! She laughs each time she tells it.  We love hearing that story and think it is wonderful that our visits promote a favorite childhood family memory.

One of our Lady-Links found a hand-stitched framed artwork with the saying “Let There Be Peace On Earth” in our community’s Treasure Chest Sale (sort of like an estate sale with proceeds benefiting charity).  That Lady-Link bought it for our dear friend, with the intent that it would be a gift from all of us.  At our next visit, our dear friend was very touched to receive it, and it was a delightful moment for all of us.

It is a joy to get to know our dear friends and to find meaningful, personal ways to enrich their lives.  After all, we are each uniquely created, and that doesn’t change simply because we lose some or all of our cognitive abilities.  How are you enriching the lives of your friends and loved ones in cognitive decline?  Listen carefully for clues of what make them unique, then find a way to enhance that.  You’ll make a new memory for yourself, and you’ll help them revive a positive memory that may have otherwise been lost.  It will be a truly unique experience for both of you.

As Lady-Links, we look for ways to engage our dear friends in conversation.  Show and Tell is a great way to help spark memories which lead to a single comment or even a discussion.

Everything is special when we look at it in a new way.  We encourage our dear friends to look at all aspects of the object we’ve brought, and we draw attention to several (but not all because that would be overwhelming) of the details we think would be of interest. 

Sometimes the back of an object (or the underside of an object) can be the point of new interest.

We always bring objects that our dear friends can hold.  Touching, feeling the surface and managing the weight of an object promote comments and increase cognitive awareness.  Tasting and smelling are great ways to engage our dear friends in memories.

With the permission of the families of our dear friends, we bring foods that they will enjoy.  It’s always special to hear stories about favorite treats from childhood, especially those associated with holidays.

Refreshments provide a welcoming atmosphere and promote special memories to share.

As a part of a Show and Tell visit, special sweets or snacks are a great discussion starter!  We have enjoyed comparing notes on how our mothers taught us to cook and even what we learned in homemaking classes.  Look for items that would be of interest to your friends or loved ones with cognitive issues and bring them to your next visit.  You’ll find something enjoyable to talk about, and it will be a special time for you both.

Sharing stories about fall activities while making a seasonal craft is a fun way to welcome the coming change.

Our crafts are chosen to engage our dear friends in conversation and activity. We loved reminiscing about seeing the color changes in the trees, feeling the cooler temperatures, and playing in the leaves when we were children.

Working together to complete a craft makes our dear friends feel that they have made a significant contribution to the project’s success.

Active participation is the goal. We find that when we give directions one step at a time and provide the help to get started, that our dear friends can accomplish most of the tasks necessary to complete the artwork.

We plan carefully how the craft will be done, and some of the smaller detailed work is in place before the visit begins.  The eyes on this sunflower project were difficult to adhere, so we added them in our preparation stages.  As a result, the craft was assembled easily and provided for an enjoyable time.

Fall is a special time of the year!  Include your friend or loved one with cognitive decline in activities to help them enjoy the season.  It’s fall, ya’ll!