Heidi Hickethier, Author at Immanuel Foundation

On nearly every holiday, the recreation teams at Immanuel Lutheran Communities put on a show. It’s important to these staff members that residents feel the days are truly special and different from ordinary days. They do this by decorating hallways, throwing parties, and encouraging other staff to participate by wearing festive outfits.

Halloween is no different. Soon, hallways and doorways will be decorated for the season. There are parties on the calendars in all levels of living, and residents are invited to dress in costume for the day. Staff members are also invited to dress up, and there will be prizes for funniest, most original, cutest, best homemade, and best overall. This will be my third Halloween at Immanuel, and I can guarantee that it won’t feel like just another day.

This is great—the residents really enjoy the special activities, and staff like the change in their daily routines (and in the dress code!). However, there’s a challenge inherent in planning holiday activities for seniors. For many adults, Halloween in particular has always been a holiday centered around children. For example, elementary school parties are common, while school-sponsored parties are more unusual for older children. Trick-or-treating is (or, in this blogger’s opinion, should be) for kids. After a certain age, many adults participate in Halloween festivities mostly through or with children. Those that aren’t tend to be gory or alcohol-centered. There’s a risk, then, that any Halloween celebration will look childish or otherwise be inappropriate for seniors.

But Halloween at Immanuel is definitely not childish. It’s fun, and there’s candy (because no one outgrows a love of candy), but the parties do not involve children’s games. Decorations and refreshments are thematic but tasteful. More importantly, even on holidays like Halloween, regular activities continue. Residents can still attend their usual fitness classes, and Wednesday-night trivia will take place as always. Halloween certainly changes the nature of the day, but our recreation teams do a great job of making the day special without erasing all the other reasons that Wednesdays are special.

In a community like Immanuel, holidays like Halloween can also serve as chances to do things we enjoyed as children but don’t do much as adults (like dressing up for Halloween). When having fun is the grownup thing to do, it’s easy for grownups to have fun. So while it’s important to strike a balance between making holidays special and making them (for lack of a better analogy) too much like elementary school, it’s also important to not let a fear of “elementary-ness” get in the way of fun. Our recreation staff does a beautiful job finding this balance.

In this post, I put on my cultural critic hat, and it’s a little (a lot) longer than usual. So pop some popcorn, kick back, and enjoy a discussion of aging in popular culture!

For two or three years quite a while ago, the Fox crime show Bones was one of my favorites. Early in my grad school days, a roommate and I happened across the premier—and got hooked. Watching this somewhat silly, always somewhat gross, and yet somehow heartfelt (at least in those days) show became one of our weekly rituals. We’d settle on the couch and observe FBI Agent Sealy Booth, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, and their team of scientists as they caught the Murderer of the Week. Then we’d discuss (okay, nitpick) the show. After I moved across the country to pursue further studies, I kept watching the show, albeit on my own. At some point, though—I can’t remember exactly when—the silliness and the grossness overtook the heartfelt relationships between the characters and the compelling storylines, and I stopped watching.

All this is a long way of telling you that, thanks to the wonders of streaming video, I’ve been catching up on all the episodes of Bones I never saw. I’m now on the final season, and two episodes jumped out at me because of their contrasting portrayals of aging. I’m sorry to say that, at least in my opinion, Bones never regained its early charm. Still, precisely because of its general frivolity, I think it’s a good idea to talk about how a show like Bones portrays aging. In its final season, the show offers two quite different visions of growing older in America and, perhaps inadvertently, offers a fascinating comment on the options available to us as we age.

NOTE: Since this show finished airing about a year ago, I will be discussing the episodes in detail, including endings. Also, this is a murder show, and very bad things happen to seniors.

The first episode I want to talk about actually aired second. It’s called “The Scare in the Score” and was episode 7 in the season. This episode builds to a dramatic climax centering on Booth and Brennan’s family (they’re married and have two kids by this point). In the beginning, however, they set out to solve the murder of Margaret Kwan, an elderly woman whose body is found in the woods. As they research the victim’s background, the team discovers that Margaret was a shut-in who lived entirely alone and had few contacts with the outside world. In fact, her most meaningful relationship was with the delivery man who brought the items she ordered from the home shopping channel. (He’s also the episode’s second victim and his murder sets in motion the main plot.)

The vision of aging in this episode is bleak indeed. Margaret lives alone and has no family or friends except for her delivery man. And to make matters worse, her death isn’t even the point. It turns out that she was tortured and killed because the delivery man had information on Booth and Brennan that the murderer wanted, and hurting her was a way to get to him. We don’t even know if it worked, because the delivery man was also tortured and killed and the episode never tells us whether he caved before Margaret died. Plot holes aside, this is a distressingly instrumental but also poignant portrayal of an older adult’s death. In the context of the story, Margaret’s death matters only in the sense that it leads the team to the delivery man, the “more important” victim whose death advances the series’ overall plot. But whether or not the writers intended to do so, they made a point about aging. Margaret’s death reminds us (in a very grizzly way) that many seniors live alone and that without connection, aging does indeed become a sad, lonely time of life.

The second episode I’ll discuss shows that it doesn’t have to be this way. Season 12, Episode 3, “The New Tricks in the Old Dog,” is set in a retirement community. So before I go on, I need to get my rant out of the way. The show calls it a “retirement home.” No one in the real-life industry calls it a “retirement home.” It is a retirement community, or maybe a senior living community, or just, you know, apartments for older adults. The point is that it’s a place where people go because they want to live around other people, not because they need to be put away, a point which the episode otherwise seems to recognize. Also, the one and only non-director staff member who makes an appearance is called an “orderly,” which makes no sense. None. That’s a hospital word (I guess? Do hospitals have orderlies anymore?). This doesn’t seem to be an Assisted Living community, so what does this guy even do? And why does he wear white scrubs? Why didn’t the writers visit an actual retirement community to see what kind of staff they have? I have so many questions about the orderly!

Ahem. Anyway, the victim, James, is a resident of said retirement community. Over the course of their investigation, Brennan and Booth discover that he had a romantic relationship with Barbara, one of the other residents. She is wealthy, and it turns out that James and a third resident, Rufus, had a partnership in which they seduced wealthy women and scammed them out of their savings. But James had fallen in love with Barbara, so much in love that he sold his osteoporosis medication online so he could buy her a wedding ring and hired a private investigator to find her long-lost daughter. Rufus isn’t happy, but he’s not the murderer. The murderer is yet another resident, a man named Red, an ex-serviceman who got very upset when he discovered that James had lied about being in the military. He hit James with his cane and, because James hadn’t been taking his osteoporosis medication and was very vulnerable to blows, James died of his injuries even though Red did not intend to kill him.

“Homes” and “orderlies” aside, I thought this episode had some interesting things to say about aging in community. For the most part, the residents weren’t played for laughs. They were people who happened to be older, and they developed relationships with each other, good and bad, that were unique to their life stage but not shown to be weird or gross. The characters’ bad actions are neither downplayed nor overemphasized because of their age, and age itself isn’t central to the murder. Like so many murderers on this show, Red uses the weapon that’s closest to hand—which happens to be his cane. Similarly, James sells osteoporosis medication because that’s what he has to sell. And he sells it because he has fallen in love, highlighting how we continue to develop new bonds with each other even toward the ends of our lives. His love for Barbara may have started out as a scam, but it turned into something real on both sides. Unlike Margaret Kwan from “The Scare in the Score,” James is surrounded by friends who miss him, and viewers get the feeling that his death is more than a plot device—it’s important and sad because every premature death is important and sad.

Side by side, these two episodes of Bones show two extremes of aging. Margaret has no connections and James has plenty of them. Though I’m sure they wouldn’t put it this way, the writers of Bones offer in the last season what amounts to an advertisement for living in community as we age. It’s interesting to find this in a show that isn’t about aging in any meaningful way, but I think it’s a good sign. It’s important for all of us to think about what we want as we grow older and to consider how we as a society approach the growing number of older adults in our cities, states, and countries. Pop culture can help us do that—even silly TV shows like Bones.

Virginia Hull loves to crochet. The Immanuel Skilled Care Center resident always has a project in progress, and she frequently carries her yarn and hook with her. On a couple of occasions, I’ve run into her just as she’s about to leave for or just getting home from a shopping trip to the hobby store to buy more yarn.

It’s a passion that goes back almost forty years. Virginia began with fine thread crocheting (think doilies and tablecloths), and while she enjoyed it enough to keep up the hobby generally, she really wanted to make blankets, scarves, and other crafts typically created with heavier yarn. The process is different enough from fine thread work that she took a night class in 1980 in Sidney, Montana, to help her make the transition. Once she started this kind of crocheting, she didn’t stop.

Family has always been very important to Virginia. Her parents emigrated from Greece and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado before she was born. Her father was killed in a mining accident when she was a young child, but she was fortunate to have a very nice stepfather. The family—including Virginia’s older brother and two younger half siblings—had a happy life in Grand Junction, where Virginia lived until she moved to Sidney for her husband’s job. Virginia has two daughters as well as one son who sadly passed away as a young man. “We had a lot of fun,” she recalls fondly when she talks about her children’s younger days. And her children are the reason why she’s in Kalispell—she followed her daughter here after her daughter moved to be closer to her own children (Virginia’s grandchildren).

Family is also in the foreground of Virginia’s mind when she’s crocheting. She took up the craft in earnest because she wanted to make blankets for her grandchildren when they graduated from high school. Other projects include at least 2-3 blankets for each of her daughters as well as a king-size bedspread. A lap blanket Virginia crocheted for her mother in her nursing-home days now hangs over the back of Virginia’s wheelchair, and Virginia’s work connects the two women even now.

On the day I spoke with Virginia, she was working on a red, white, and blue lap blanket. She’s not sure exactly who it’s for yet, but it’s sure to find a home with someone who appreciates it. It might be a little bit before it’s done, though—with the holidays approaching, Virginia has some other projects that have to take priority, so she’s going to be busy. That’s okay; Virginia likes to be busy. When I asked her what she likes about crocheting, she replied, “It’s relaxing, but it keeps me busy and keeps my mind working.”

The mischievous smile on Virginia’s face in her photo gives you a small glimpse of her engaging personality. She was a pleasure to talk with, and I look forward to seeing more of her and her creations around campus.

On Thursday, October 11, the Immanuel Foundation will host our first public event. We are inviting the community to join us at 5:30pm in the lobby of Buffalo Hill Terrace for drinks, heavy appetizers prepared by our marvelous dining team, and the unveiling of the Passions Project photos. And we’re extra lucky because photographer Heidi Wagner will be present to discuss her creative process and the story behind the Passions Project.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve read quite a bit about the Passions Project by now. We’re excited to share these photos. Moreover, we’re excited to offer you a glimpse of the amazing, engaged seniors who live at Immanuel. Whether they’re sharing their collections, walking beloved pets, or playing games, these residents continue to pursue the activities that bring them the most joy.

Immanuel Lutheran Communities participated in the Passions Project because we think it’s important to show our community how active and interesting residents remain. That’s partly why the Foundation wanted to sponsor this project, of course. We think it says a lot about the vision of aging we want to promote—one that’s active, engaged, and joyful rather than isolated and dull.

But the Foundation also chose to be part of this project because we want to show you who we raise money for. All nineteen of the faces you’ll see at the Passions Project opening are Immanuel residents. They live in all parts of community, from independent living to skilled nursing. While some of them might need more philanthropic assistance than others, they are all real people engaged with their passions right here, in this community. They all have stories. Every single Immanuel resident has a lifetime of experience behind them, and every single one of them has something to share. We’re hoping that The Passions Project will highlight some small part of the wisdom—and just plain interesting stories—housed in our community.

We’ve chosen to celebrate The Passions Project and the Foundation launch at the same time because both things are, in some ways, about celebrating the wonderful seniors who call Immanuel home. The Passions Project celebrates them in obvious ways, by highlighting their skills, talents, and passions. The Foundation celebrates them by seeking funds to make sure their lives remain as joyful and engaged as possible. All of us, no matter our ages, need support to pursue our passions. Immanuel wholeheartedly supports residents in living life in the ways that make them happiest. The Foundation’s work helps make this support possible, and as we get our work off the ground, we look forward to learning more and sharing more about the people who live in our community.

So please join us on Thursday the 11th! There’s still time to RSVP by clicking on the link below.

Life Plan Communities come in a variety of sizes, pricepoints, financial models, and management models. One thing that sets Immanuel Lutheran Communities apart from many of our peers is that we are a nonprofit. A whitepaper from the industry organization LeadingAge notes, “Many aging services nonprofits trace their histories back 5-10 decades or more. Many were founded when a person or small group of people saw a need and mobilized to meet that need… These volunteers reached out proactively, often taking significant risks or leaps of faith, then created enough structure around the effort (often through faith communities or fraternal organizations) to assure continuation beyond meeting the immediate need or the short-term enthusiasm of individuals.”

When I read this statement, I felt like I was reading a description of Immanuel. We’ve been here at the top of Buffalo Hill in Kalispell since 1957. The organization was started when, a few years before that, a small, dedicated group of volunteers realized just how few options there were for seniors in the Flathead Valley to get the care they needed as they aged. They got together, formed a nonprofit, and built the “Lutheran Home”—the building that is now the Immanuel Skilled Care Center. As the organization’s original name indicates, most of them knew each other from church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America continues as the sponsoring organization for Immanuel.

I think a lot about what makes us, as a nonprofit, different from for-profit communities in the same industry. To be fair, we don’t have a ton of competition in Montana (at the moment, we’re one of very few full-service Life Plan Communities in the state). But I think it’s still good to have an idea of what sets us apart. After all, residents at all Life Plan Communities pay for the services they receive, and surely staff at all communities care for the residents. In the end, what difference does it make whether the organization exists to turn a profit?

Here’s what I think: Because we aren’t trying to make much money over and above our operating expenses, we have the luxury of focusing on people and their needs. When we need more resources to strengthen our organization, we can turn to philanthropy instead of simply increasing prices or limiting staff wages. That’s largely why we have a foundation! We also exist solely to meet a need in our community. While we of course need to be financially solvent, we have the luxury of putting the needs of our aging neighbors ahead of any organizational need to turn a profit.

That means that when we’re considering what new services to add, we study the market less with the intent of figuring out what will yield the highest financial return but with the intent of discovering what will most benefit the people around us. With the Villas project and the recent Retreat expansion, we responded to needs for additional independent living apartments and short-term rehabilitation rooms. As we look to the future, we see needs for Medicaid-eligible dementia care, which by definition produces less revenue than almost anything else we could build. We want to build it because we care about seniors, including those with less ability to pay.

As a Foundation supporter, you play a critical role in our nonprofit success. Thank you for your interest in Immanuel—we wouldn’t be where we are without people like you.

Every year, Buffalo Hill Terrace hosts a big end-of-summer party. This event marks the end of our annual concert series and brings the community together for one last hurrah in the outdoors before the Montana winter takes hold. This year’s event on Saturday, September 15 featured local Western band Barnyard Riot. The Cajun menu, planned and prepared by our fabulous chef Andrew Nelson and his stellar team, included everything from homemade hush puppies (my personal favorite!) to alligator legs (no, they were not chicken).

The courtyard was full of residents, family members, and friends of Immanuel Lutheran Communities enjoying each other and the beautiful weather. Hannah Brown and the Recreation team used checked table cloths and tin pales of flower arrangements to lend a casual but special and festive air to the space. Guests chatted, ate, listened to music, and admired the flower beds that are still thriving in the main courtyard even as fall approaches. All in all, it was a wonderful atmosphere. The Buffalo Hill Terrace team showed once again how well they work together to produce events the entire Flathead Valley community can enjoy.

I was also struck by how philanthropic our community is. As you may know, we’ve been raising money for altar furnishings and stained glass for our new chapel. Thanks to a recent generous donation and a grant from the William and Blanche Hetzel Foundation, we are well on our way toward meeting our $30,000 goal. We were also the recipients of a quilt, handmade and donated by Charmaine Stappler, which we raffled off. Saturday’s concert marked the end of ticket sales. On this last day alone, we raised $550 from the quilt raffle. All told, the raffle raised $1,435 for the altar and stained glass and helped move us that much closer to our goal. We drew the winner on Saturday, as well, and the lucky Cheryl Luke now owns this beautiful quilt. Thank you so much to Charmaine and all who bought tickets! The generosity of people like you helps our community grow and thrive!

While we’re well on our way to creating a sacred space in our new auditorium, we’re not there yet. Right now, we’re about $13,000 short of our goal. If you’d like to help, contact the Foundation office or click the link below and designate your gift to the Altar or Stained Glass fund. Like the residents and family members present at the concert, our donors are critical parts of our Immanuel community. We truly appreciate all you share with us, and we hope to see you (again!) next time our community comes together.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Clyde Pederson, the first of many Passions Project participants you’ll be meeting over the coming months. Clyde’s passion is woodcarving. If you look around the Buffalo Hill Terrace apartment he shares with his wife, Jeanine, you’ll see everything from bark houses like the one pictured above to whimsical carvings of mucus (yes, mucus).

When I asked him what he likes best about wood carving, Clyde replied, “It’s a good hobby because it’s portable… You can carve any place you can sit.” The number of carvings in the apartment alone suggests that he sat and carved in a lot of different places. Jeanine would certainly say this is the case, though he most often carved in their home. “His passion was woodcarving,” she recalled, “and my job was vacuuming up wood shavings!”

Clyde began carving when he was in high school. He still has his first carvings, a tiny ball in a box and an interlocking chain. But he had a lot more time to carve after he retired from his work as a farmer. When he and Jeanine were camped at an RV park, they came across a fellow camper who was carving small boots. Clyde was inspired to take up his own knife and chisel, and a passion was born. Also, he had lost the sight in his right eye and had reduced depth perception, so when he was considering a hobby to pursue in his retirement, carving seemed safer than the kind of woodworking done with power tools.

Clyde never took a class in woodcarving. Instead, he used books. He even learned the intricate art of bark carving from a book. However, it’s sometimes difficult to use pictures as precise examples, especially with bark. He emphasized this when he taught bark carving during his and Jeanine’s winter stints in Arizona. Sometimes, he said, it was hard to explain to his students that carving isn’t just about replicating what you see in front of you. “You can’t duplicate a [bark] carving because the bark dictates what you can do,” Clyde told us during his photo session. “You have to be creative.”

Clyde certainly is creative! He took his inspiration from everything in the world around him and from the wood in front of him. Local wildlife has inspired carvings of deer, elk, and bears, while pharmaceutical commercials have inspired more whimsical pieces like toenail fungus and, yes, mucus. Clyde carved what he saw in the wood.

Sometimes, Clyde bought the wood he used in his carvings. His favorite wood was basswood. It’s soft, fine-grained, and white, which makes it versatile and easy to carve. He also used material he found locally, especially when carving bark. The banks of the Flathead River provided a lot of trees with good bark. For bark carving, Clyde explained, you need a tree that’s been dead for long enough that the bark is loose. It’s also important that it be thick enough to hold together when carved but not so thick that you have to cut too much away. Some of his carvings were even inspired by found objects or trash. He’s made a series of ducks out of old wooden golf clubs—showing that one man’s trash is indeed another’s treasure!

Clyde isn’t able to carve much anymore (a hand tremor makes it unsafe), but he still talks about it with great pride, and it’s clear he’s passionate about it. When he put on his protective gear and picked up his tools for the photo, it was like he’d never put them down. Clyde’s carvings are unique and special, and it was a pleasure to learn more about them—and him!

When Megan Krupp moved with her family to the Flathead Valley in 2016, she had her sights set on a nursing career. She had been staying home with her three children, but family circumstances meant she needed to go back to work, so she knew she needed a job that would make going back to school as easy as possible. Nursing was a natural fit; she loves helping people and forming relationships. A spot in Immanuel’s in-house CNA class seemed like the perfect way to get started on her new dream.

Megan is very grateful that Immanuel’s class was available. Because it took only three weeks, “it was fast and furious,” and it got her “back in the swing of school.” Since she didn’t have to pay for the class, it also “made life easier” for her and her family. As soon as she achieved her certification, Megan began working as a CNA at Immanuel. She describes her job as “hard work, but rewarding.”

After achieving her CNA credential, Megan immediately began working toward a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) degree, which she achieved in the summer of 2018. In fact, I spoke with Megan on the day after she passed her last final—with one more A in a whole series of high grades. Immanuel helped Megan achieve this goal, too; she received money from the Employee Education Fund every semester as she pursued her license. And she’s a great example of why we offer this benefit to employees. Megan plans to use her credential right here, to benefit Immanuel’s residents. She’ll continue to do that when she achieves her Registered Nurse (RN) credential in the future (she’s already hard at work on the coursework she needs to get it!).

For Megan, Immanuel’s CNA class really was the first step toward a career in geriatric nursing. She had been a CNA when she was eighteen, and she’s spent a lot of time volunteering. She wanted a career where she could make a difference in people’s lives. Megan has come to love the personal connections she’s able to make with residents she sees every day. She particularly loves hearing their stories and describes her experience as humbling. Our everyday challenges and struggles are “just a little piece of the whole life spectrum,” she remarks. Because residents tend to stay in long-term care for some time, the connections she makes with them are much deeper and longer term than those she could make in a medical office. She loves “being part of their lives instead of a 10-minute segment twice a year.”

During our conversation, Megan mentioned several times how grateful she is for the opportunities Immanuel has offered her. Her experience has been so positive that leaving for another job is “not even an option.” “I just like working here,” she told me at the end of the conversation. Immanuel is grateful for Megan, too, and delighted that she has chosen Immanuel Lutheran Communities as the place where she will grow into her nursing career.

This week, many kids in the Flathead Valley went back to school. The rest will return next week, ready for a new year of learning and fun. For me, it’s my third year of not going back to school, which is interesting. Every year from the time I began Kindergarten at age five until three years ago, I went back to school in some capacity. These days, I am neither a student nor an educator, but late summer and early fall still get me thinking about goal setting and renewal.

Obviously, I’m someone who believes in education (otherwise I wouldn’t have so much of it!). But education looks different at different points in our lives. When we’re kids, going to school is about learning the basics of we need to become successful adults. As we grow up, we pursue additional education to gain skills and knowledge for our jobs and, if we’re lucky, to learn more about things we love.

If we’re even luckier, what we learn about the things we love applies directly to our jobs. That’s how it is for many of the employees here at Immanuel who are joining their children in going back to school this fall. In my last post, I shared with you some information about the Employee Education Fund, which allows some of our staff members to go back to school to gain additional credentials that will improve their lives. Many of them have set goals of obtaining degrees and then higher-paying jobs. Others simply want to learn things that will help them do their current jobs better. I am impressed by both; it takes a lot of effort and dedication to continue one’s education while also working. People who do this usually do it because they want to advance in their jobs, but they wouldn’t make the effort if they didn’t love those jobs and believe in the importance of doing them well.

As I think about what I want to accomplish over the coming nine months, I think a lot about how I, as a Foundation staff member, can help support my fellow staff members who are going back to school. One thing I can do is work on raising money for the Education Fund. I’m also working on raising funds to restart our on-site CNA class, which has helped numerous Flathead Valley residents gain a credential that helps them earn more money, at no charge to them.

Learning doesn’t stop just because we leave school. I’ve learned a lot in my years at Immanuel, and most of it didn’t involve a classroom or someone called an “instructor.” Sure, I’ve taken a few training courses to help me excel in elements of my job I wanted to get better at, but most of what I’ve learned has come from residents and fellow staff members. They’ve taught me about patience, about overcoming obstacles, and about how powerful small, kind words can be. I am proud to help those fellow staff members continue learning in whatever form works best for them, and I hope you’ll join me in these efforts.