Sheridan style dining chairs

As I am in the process of selling items from various family members’ estates, I came across this very helpful website by Judith Miller. She writes this incredible guide with full color photos of every type of antique you could think of. If you register on her website for free, you can access estimates of price ranges on items in her catalog. Very helpful for local or ebay sales to give you somewhere to start if you have no idea.

This weekend I had the incredible experience of visiting the 30+ year old  educational retreat center Omega in the Hudson Valley in upper New York state. This vacation was intentionally planned around the author Julia Cameron and her teaching of her class “The Artist’s Way” in a group experience.

After the loss of a parent, family dynamics change and you or your parent may change how you did things such as vacations or holidays. I tend to prefer group vacations but after my father died my mother too enjoyed being in more group based vacation experiences than on her own. Here are a few ideas to help you or you parent (a few are for single women only) experience more group based vacations:

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I wish I had known about AARP’s grief and loss website when my father first died. It has a lot of helpful checklists and information about grief. The topics names their articles cover include Final Details, Urgent Details, Steps to Take, Necessary Papers, and Claiming Benefits. You don’t have to be an AARP member to access the information.

HBO is presenting a 3 night series on Alzheimer’s next week. All cable subscribers, even those without HBO, should be able to view the series on the HBO channel for their cable company.

Schedule:
* The Memory Loss Tapes — Sunday, May 10 at 9 PM
* Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? — Monday, May 11 at 7:30 PM
* Momentum in Science — Monday, May 11 at 8 PM
* Caregivers — Tuesday, May 12 at 7 PM
* Momentum in Science, Part 2 –Tuesday, May 12 at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST

When you need organizing help after the loss of a parent, contact a member of NAPO. NAPO, The National Association of Professional Organizers,  operates as the national association dedicated to the field of organizing and provides referrals to local organizers. On its Web site, you will find local organizers to assist with memorial service planning or general organizing assistance. You can find a referral to a local organizer for short-term or long-term projects or a part-time personal assistant on the Web site. The organizers are either generalists in the field of organizing or specialists in particular areas, such as cleaning out garages/attics/basements, working with seniors, electronic and paper organization, estate sales, and moving and relocation.

MAIN NAPO PHONE: (847) 375-4746

I recently learned about a program offered by many companies -such as Nike and Intel- and individuals for caregivers called Powerful Tools for Caregivers. Offered by non-profit Legacy Caregiver Services, Powerful Tools for Caregivers is a six week program for family and friends of older adults who have Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or other long-term debilitating diseases.

Class topics include: “Taking Care of You”, “Identifying and Reducing Personal Stress”, “Communicating Feelings, Needs and Concerns”, “Communicating in Challenging Situations”, “Learning from Our Emotions”, and “Mastering Caregiving Decisions”.

For more information about local classes offered email caregiver@lhs.org. Or go to the Web site.

Below are a few questions I asked Sheila Warnock, author of Share the Care recently for my monthly newsletter…(sign up for monthly newsletter here)

JH: When an adult child first realizes they need outside help in assisting a newly widowed parent, what is the first thing they need to do to assemble support team or “caregiver group”? How soon after loss do you think this should take place?

 SW: GET EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. A family discussion with your siblings and newly widowed parent will enable your family to honestly determine what kind of assistance is needed, who in the community might help and how fast you need to get organized. It’s crucial to recognize if your parent will need a great deal of support, or if they can do well just cushioned with loving practical and emotional backing for a few weeks or months. If a parent needs constant companionship and physical care other options may need to be considered with input from his or her physician. The key is to agree support is needed. A parent might resist allowing others to help fearing loss of independence, being perceived as a burden, or that they could never reciprocate. (more…)

Adrienne E. Simpson, President of Smooth Mooove Senior Relocation Services, Inc. in Stone Mountain, Georgia, hopes to help other seniors and families avoid moving nightmares by anticipating many specific downsizing and relocation needs of seniors ahead of time. Ms. Simpson started her four-year-old company after she was personally overwhelmed by the physical work and time commitment required when moving her mother from Georgia from Michigan. Below Ms. Simpson answered some common questions about moving seniors…

Q: Ms. Simpson, Can you explain how moving needs are different when you are moving an older parent? 
A: Seniors don’t move because they want to. They move because they have to.  They move for three reasons:  failing health, loss of a spouse, or a house that is overwhelming with responsibility. When a senior moves they typically downsize.  They don’t take everything with them.  They have to make difficult decisions on what to keep, sell, donate, and give away.  The downsizing process is overwhelming, emotional, and traumatic.  It’s what makes moving seniors different.

Q:  What is the biggest mistake adult children make with regard to moving an aging parent?
A: Waiting too late, allowing their parents to delay the event until they are in crisis.  When the move is done during crisis, the senior loses the ability to make critical decisions on what will happen with personal property.  The children make all the decisions and often decide that everything is junk and discard everything.
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I wish I’d known about The Health Resource when my father was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This is a professional medical information research organization that puts together for you a completely researched overview of your cancer or non-cancer medical diagnosis based on stage and provides traditional and alternative therapies for treatment. They can also save you time by providing you lists of the top specialists and their contact information for your type of disease. The Health Resource has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, Family Circle Magazine and Forbes Magazine.

When we face difficult parental loss, many people don’t feel like eating. This typical loss of appetite grievers develop can breed unhealthy consequences. If this is something your family faces, read about how hiring a personal chef to assist your widowed parent or your family can help out the first weeks or months after loss.

Below, Tom Steiber, CEO of Big City Chefs, answers my questions regarding hiring Big City Chefs to assist families utilize personal chefs to prepare meals after loss:

Q: Tom, I understand that a recent friend of an employee of Big City Chefs who was newly widowed used your services to help her after the loss of her spouse. Explain why she decided to use Big City Chefs to reduce her food/cooking tasks.
 
A: After a loss, some people find day-to-day tasks very daunting, which exacerbates the stress of the loss.  As a result, many grieving people will neglect their eating habits, which is not healthy.  Having a chef come into the home once a week or every two weeks to cook a batch of meals not only gave that friend some much needed rest, but it also restored her physical and emotional health to give her the strength she needed to cope with her loss.
 
Q: Tom, If an adult child of a newly widowed parent wants to arrange for a personal chef to prepare meals for their parent who may live across the country, what is the process?
 
A: It’s really quite easy.  In a pinch, the person making the arrangement could simply visit our website at www.bigcitychefs.com to order a package for a set number of meals as a gift, which can be purchased on our website anytime.  This would be sent in the form of a gift certificate that the grieving parent could redeem by then calling our office at 1-866-321-CHEF, at which time we set up a consultation with a chef.  If the adult child would like more involvement in the process, calling us to discuss the parent’s needs in greater detail can be done up front so that the parent doesn’t have to handle those matters. 
 
Q:  Tom, What kind of cooking training do your chefs have?
 
A: As a general rule, our chefs are professionally trained graduates of top culinary schools with several years of high volume, high pressure, high-end, fine dining restaurant cuisine.  Once they’ve handled the toughest educational and restaurant situations, they can easily take care of our clients and cover a broad range of individualized needs.  
 
Q: Tom, How do you make sure your chefs are safe to go into people’s homes? What is your screening process? Are you bonded and insured?
 
A very important personal quality that our chefs must have is a high level of trustworthiness, kindness, and effective communication, since they deal so closely with clients.  We take chefs through a rigorous screening process that includes personal interviews, creating menus for mock clients, verifying employment and personal references, and conducting criminal background checks.  We would rather work very closely with small teams of chefs than very loosely with a large network, as this helps create a very consistent customer experience.  And yes, we carry commercial liability insurance with Lloyd’s of London to protect our clients from foodborne illnesses or damage to their premises.
 
Q: Tom, Can a client request all organic or all local food to be used by the chef?
 
A: Absolutely.  We provide a totally personalized experience for the customer, and many customers do choose local, sustainable, and organic product.  In some communities, this might come from local farms or farmer’s markets, while in others, it may come from natural grocers in their neighborhoods.  We can accommodate any requests and can customize a package and price to meet almost any need. 
 
Q: Tom, Can you tell us the price ranges for two weeks of personally cooked food by your chefs by different locations across the country? (i.e. Pacific Coastal states $X-$X), Midwest($X-$X), Southern($X-$X), New England($X-$X)?)
 
We like to provide customers with a package price that includes all groceries and labor.  As a general rule, our pricing is fairly similar across the country, although it is slightly more expensive in the New York City metro area.  Ten nights of dinner entrees, including the cost of food, start at $400 for 2 people and $750 for 4 people, or 20 and 40 large dinner entrees and side dishes, respectively.  Pricing for highly customized packages can vary a bit depending on the type of ingredients used.  In New York, we would typically add about $50-75 to either package.
 
Thanks Tom!