Author: Lauren Davis

One of the things I get to do in my job at Immanuel is lead the resident Book Club at Buffalo Hill Terrace.  We meet once a month to discuss a book, and we’ve read everything from historical fiction to murder mysteries to nonfiction.  I love this for a lot of reasons.  First, I love books, so having literature as part of my job is pretty nice for me.  Second, I get to share some of my favorite books and writers with a great group of people, and they share theirs with me, so there’s quite an exchange of idea and possibilities.  These are the standard, expected benefits of a book club with any group of people.

When one leads a book club mostly comprised of seniors, though, something else cool happens: I get to hear lots of stories about life in the past.  That was especially true at our meeting last week, less because of the book we just read than because of the book we’re getting ready to read.  As you may know, the 19^th amendment, guaranteeing women in the United States the right to vote, passed Congress in 1919 (and was ratified by a sufficient number of states in 1920).  To celebrate the centennial anniversary of this landmark occasion, the Buffalo Hill Terrace Book Club is reading Elaine Weiss’s new book The Woman’s Hour (if you’re intrigued by the link, don’t forget to shop at your Immanuel-linked Amazon Smile account!).  March is Women’s History Month, so it seemed like the perfect time to read about and consider this key occasion in women’s history.

As we talked about our upcoming read, I provided some additional background on the early women’s suffrage movement, as it’s a subject I’m very familiar with from my academic research.  It took seventy-two years from the first US women’s right convention in Seneca Falls, New York to the ratification of the 19^th amendment.  This was news to some of the book club members, but when they thought it through, they quickly connected the challenge experienced by the suffragists with challenges they faced in their own lives.

The Terrace Book Club is comprised of wonderful, articulate, smart, formally- and informally-educated women (men are welcome, but none have ever come).  They spend a lot of time connecting books to their lives.  This is particularly interesting and welcome in cases of historical fiction, when their life experience often means they can identify with the books we read in ways I can’t.  During our conversation this past Friday, I learned that one club member had been “clerical-tracked” in high school simply because she was a girl, in spite of her academic suitability for a college track.  Another talked about how she, a professional in a academic department, had been asked to make coffee and take meeting minutes even though she didn’t have a secretarial role.

While the book club members have always been able to vote, their mothers were among the first generation of American women to be able to do so in national elections.  The women in the book club are therefore very much aware of how much has changed in the world since their mothers were children—or even since they were young adults themselves.  They are able to put present-day issues in long-term perspective, and they appreciate history because they have lived more of it than those of us who are younger.

At Immanuel, we value the life experience all of our residents bring, and we want everyone in our community to have a chance to benefit from their wisdom the way those of us who work here do.  Your gifts help us do that.  Thank you.

As you may know, Immanuel Lutheran Communities recently opened a new fitness center and exercise classroom at Buffalo Hill Terrace.  Independent and Assisted Living residents now have 24-hour access to a variety of high-quality fitness equipment as well as several scheduled exercise classes each day.  While Buffalo Hill Terrace has always offered fitness classes, the new center greatly expands its offerings.  Fitness-conscious residents like Lois McClaren now have a place to go where they can improve their health, every day, no matter the weather, without leaving their homes.

With this new Fitness Center comes a new Fitness Coordinator, Todd Roush.  Todd is a key part of Immanuel’s fitness strategy, and he has many interesting things to say about fitness for seniors and life at Immanuel.  I recently had an opportunity to talk with Todd, and I’d like to share what I learned from and about him.

Todd is a Montana native who grew up in the Flathead Valley.  He moved to Washington state for college and graduated in 2015 from Eastern Washington University with a degree in Exercise Science.  After college, he worked in physical therapy, first in Idaho and then, when he decided it was time to come home, here in Kalispell.  For a while, he directed a work rehab program, helping people who had been injured get ready to go back to work.

Todd’s current role as a fitness coordinator in a retirement community is not what he originally planned for his life.  When he graduated with his Exercise Science degree, he planned to work with athletes.  His earliest work experience didn’t steer him toward seniors, either—he interned at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and focused during that time on cardiac and exercise physiology for children. But in his time working in physical therapy, he began to enjoy working with older adults.  Simple statistics show that we are more likely to get injured as we get older, so Todd found that many of his clients were seniors.  When the opportunity at Immanuel became available, he knew it was a direction he wanted to take.

Todd likes working with seniors because his clients have been many places and had many experiences, but they are still open to learning new things.  “I get to teach them more,” Todd said, noting how honored he feels to have something to offer to people who already know so much.  He also likes the challenge presented by working with over 100 unique individuals.  Each client’s needs are unpredictable, and Todd has to find new ways to help them.  In physical therapy, he noted, each type of injury could be treated in a fairly typical way.  But when coaching seniors in fitness, Todd has to take each individual’s daily needs into account in order to “plan a unique route for each resident for improving health.”

For seniors who want to improve their health, Todd recommends that they not be afraid to try new things.  He encourages his clients not to be afraid of change and new opportunities.  The fitness center is full of new, unfamiliar-looking equipment, but those who try it usually like it.  Like all new things, it takes some getting used to.  That goes for classes, too.  But even as they try new things, Todd cautions, seniors should be aware of their limitations and not push themselves too far (this is good advice for everyone!).  It’s important to practice exercise safely, and Todd’s available to help residents figure out how to do so.

Living in a community like Immanuel provides residents with unique fitness opportunities, Todd notes.  Residents have easy access to a wide variety of fitness opportunities, and they don’t even have to go outside to get to them.  That’s especially nice in this winter weather we’ve been having lately!  They can also come whenever they want, including early in the morning and late at night.  Because there are no restrictions on when residents can use the equipment in the fitness center, they can truly improve their health at their own paces and on the schedules that work best for them.

Another advantage of living in a community is the longer-term relationships residents can form with their fitness professional.  While he’s only been at Immanuel for a few months, Todd is already getting to know the residents.  These relationships are one of things he’s coming to like best about his job.  “This is a huge benefit,” he said.

Looking beyond Immanuel, Todd thinks that the Valley in general could use more senior-friendly fitness opportunities. Residents here have wonderful opportunities and resources available to them now, but that isn’t true for the Valley at large.  Even hospital-affiliated fitness centers don’t have the options for seniors that Immanuel has.  It’s important to Todd to keep building awareness and knowledge about how people can stay fit throughout their lives, and he’s thrilled to have the opportunity to do that here at Immanuel.

If he’s not teaching, Todd is usually in his office in the fitness center.  He’s always available to help residents with the equipment and to answer questions for staff, as well.  It’s important to him that people don’t worry about bugging him—“I’m here to be bugged!” he said, so feel free to stop by!

When I walk the halls of Buffalo Hill Terrace, I frequently encounter one particular couple strolling along hand-in-hand.  They’re at ease in each other’s company, and they are almost always together.   I haven’t gotten to know these particular residents personally, but their love for each other is apparent.  Though I don’t know their love story, it’s clear that they have one and that it’s ongoing.

There are a lot of lifelong love stories in our community.  One of my favorites was told to me by a resident who has since passed away.  When his wife of many years passed away over a year before he did, he began carrying their wedding photo with him.  Any time he had the opportunity, he would show it and tell the story of how they met.  When both of them were in college, they attended a dance.  She went with his best friend and he went with her sorority sister.  By the end of the night, this resident told me, “We had each other but we didn’t have those friends any more.”  They’d been together ever since.

Immanuel is full of love stories like this.  High school sweethearts Fred and Shelby Thompson supported each other in decades-long careers and now travel the world together, using their apartment in The Villas at Buffalo Hill as their base.  In every story Fred and Shelby tell about their lives (and they tell a lot of wonderful stories!), they are together, and their joy and ease in each other’s company is apparent even from casual interactions.

And then there are relationships that are no less strong for being shorter in duration.  David and Martha Maurer knew each other and dated a bit in high school, but they didn’t marry until five years ago.  In the mean time, they both married and had families with other people.  When they reconnected, it quickly became apparent that they wanted to spend the next phase of their lives together (with their dog Toby, of course).  When they moved to Kalispell, they came together, and they moved together to Buffalo Hill Terrace.

Though couples of course prefer to share a home for as long as possible,  there are times when one member of a couple’s health needs change more rapidly than the other’s.  One of the great things about a community like Immanuel is that the spouse who needs more care can move to an appropriate level of living while the other remains in an independent or assisted living apartment.  I know several spouses who make their way each day from Buffalo Hill Terrace to the Lodge at Buffalo Hill or the Immanuel Skilled Care Center to spend time with their husband or wife.  The person’s physical or cognitive condition has changed, but the love is still there.

Many couples hope to have the kind of lasting love we see every day here at Immanuel.  Valentine’s Day is a wonderful time to reflect on these kinds of relationships and to think more about how we create communities where they thrive.  I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day celebrating with your loved ones—and that you celebrate many more!

If we are lucky, we will all eventually become seniors.  Aging is just a part of life.  Unfortunately, in our culture we often view aging through a negative lens and treat the oldest among us with less dignity and respect than they deserve.  Sometimes, we assume they’re kind of dumb or treat them like children unable to think and fend for themselves.  If you think about it, this is weird.  When we’re children, teenagers, and young adults, we hear constantly that we just don’t know enough yet, that we don’t have the life experience and wisdom to make good choices or to do what we want to do.  And then this all becomes true again, apparently, once we turn seventy or so.  In this framing, everyone is almost always either too young or too old to know their own mind.  This puts all of us in a bind for most of our lives.

Of course, we know that seniors certainly do have the wisdom and life experience to make their own decisions.  And we always need to respect their choices.  Sometimes, though, there’s a fine line between respecting someone’s choices and making sure they get the help they need.  In a recent blog post on balancing combatting ageism with insuring seniors have appropriate resources, Robyn I. Stone of the LeadingAge Long-Term Services and Supports Center writes, “Our bodies and functional abilities do change after a certain age.  That means we may require far different interventions to maintain our biological, psychological, and social well-being at age 80 than we did at age 21.”

Stone’s quote resonated with me because of a couple of interactions I’ve had recently with residents who are struggling with their increasingly limited physical abilities.  As a professional in a senior-living community, it’s important to me to respect residents’ statements about what they want and need.  But it’s also vital to make sure they’re safe.  Sometimes, that means helping them, or finding someone trained to offer a particular kind of assistance (since I’m not clinical staff), even when they say they don’t want help.  This can be hard.  I’ve heard residents express embarrassment as well as frustration because they cannot safely do what they’re used to doing.  Sometimes, they try to do it anyway.

At Immanuel, I think we’re very good at balancing insuring residents’ safety with respecting residents’ autonomy.  How do we do this?  Well, mostly it’s about compassion.  If I’ve been talking with a resident who then needs help to stand even though she doesn’t want it, I need to find someone trained to help her safely.  But I can also continue the conversation we were having about something else entirely.  And I can listen when she wants to express frustration with her situation.  That resident might have some physical difficulties, but she is so much more than the sum of her physical difficulties.  My coworkers and I know that, and we know that sometimes it helps a lot just to acknowledge that the situation just stinks.  Caregiving staff can kindly and matter-of-factly offer physical assistance (some of our CNAs are incredibly good at this!) and then residents can get on with their days.

Residents know very well that their bodies are not the same at 80 as they were at 21.  There’s no need for us to tell them that.  All we need to do is interact with them as individuals instead of numbers (ages).  I think it also helps to remember that if we’re lucky, we’ll all be seniors someday.  We surely want both autonomy and safety, and it is possible to have both.

Have you seen the British series Last Tango in Halifax?  If you haven’t, and you’re interested in seniors, then you should, because it’s awesome!  The BBC show aired in the US on PBS beginning in 2013.  It’s now available on Netflix, and if you’re looking for a funny, engaging, smart, moving show, I highly recommend it (with, er, a few caveats about plot developments later on)!

Last Tango in Halifax centers around the lives and love of Celia and Alan, a pair of former high school sweethearts who reconnect on Facebook some six decades after she stood him up for a date (accidentally! A note went astray!).  At the end of the first episode, after one rollicking date involving a senior-speed car chase, a police station, and a contentious (to say the least) first meeting between Celia’s daughter Caroline and Alan’s daughter Gillian, the couple announces that they’re going to get married.

The show portrays Alan and Celia’s relationship as practically inevitable.  In an early episode, Celia tells Caroline, “[Marrying Alan] is what I want.  It’s what I’ve always wanted.  I know him better than I know myself.  Can you understand that?”  It may have been only a few days since Celia and Alan found each other again, this line and the show’s first season imply, but their romance is not new. They have a history together, and it’s mostly a matter of catching up and figuring out how to have a relationship now that they’ve had long, full lives without each other.

Those long, full lives mostly involve their previous spouses (both now deceased) and their now-adult daughters.  One of the things this show does so well is contrast Alan and Celia’s sweet, easy romance with the chaotic, conflicted romances of Caroline, Gillian, and pretty much everyone else who enters the characters’ orbit.  When Alan and Celia come into conflict—and they do, because they are human—it concerns their children and grandchildren.  In general, Alan is much more open and accommodating than Celia.  While he expresses disappointment with some of Gillian’s more questionable life choices, he’s never outright cruel, as Celia is to Caroline on more than one occasion.  Later on, this cruelty causes Alan to question whether they can really be happy together.  Later-life romance, Last Tango suggests, requires people to negotiate relationships less as individuals than as members of complicated family networks.

It would be easy for a show like Last Tango to idealize romance between seniors.  Early on, it looks like that will happen.  For example, as Caroline, Gillian, and the grandchildren worry over their whereabouts, Alan and Celia spend a night locked in a “haunted” local mansion.  They’re trapped there accidentally, but they’re fine, and they have a fun time eating chocolates in a historic bed and discussing whether they believe in ghosts.  Their daughters’ worry is unnecessary, and the show’s general attitude seems to be: “Seniors are adults!  They can take care of themselves!  And aren’t they cute?”  It’s all true, but it’s not the whole story.  Like all of us, seniors are complicated.  In the first season finale, after a scene in which Celia expresses bigotry as well as rudeness to Caroline, the relationship nearly ends.  Only a heart attack on Alan’s part and a major mea culpa on Celia’s make it possible for them to reunite.

Here’s a spoiler: Alan and Celia do not marry during the show’s first season.  They do stay together, and as the show progresses over a couple more seasons, they continue to navigate the challenges of later-life romance and marriage.  Last Tango does an excellent job of showing that its aging characters are complex individuals with pasts, presents, and futures.  Alan and Celia are a cute couple, but they’re not just a cute couple.  They are also two individuals with some very not-cute traits, figuring out how to navigate family and love near the ends of their lives.  In short, Last Tango in Halifax does a great job showing that a “third act” romance is possible, and that it’s no easier than romances earlier in life.

I have mentioned before that my Grandpa Marvin lives at Buffalo Hill Terrace.  I am lucky that I get to see him very frequently—almost every working day, at least, and of course at family events on weekends and holidays.  But for most of my life, I’ve had the good fortune to see my grandparents regularly.  I got to know all four of grandparents in some capacity and three of them lived well into my adulthood (my father’s father passed away when I was eleven).

And my good fortune extends even farther than that.  I got to meet seven of my eight great grandparents, and I remember three of them well.  Cream-filled sugar wafer cookies still taste to me like Great-Grandma Lola’s house because she always had them on hand when I visited her as a small child.  I have a lot of memories and associations like that, all because I grew up surrounded by older family members.

I also feel fortunate to have a sense of continuity and connection to my history.  Having grandparents and great grandparents around me has always meant that I know quite a bit about my family’s past.  I certainly wouldn’t have had that without them.

I don’t say all of this just to brag about how lucky I’ve been in my life.  Earlier generations have been important in my life because I get to know more about where I came from.  That also applies to us as a collective society.  Seniors are an important resource because they remember the past and because they’ve experienced social change.  When I talk with Immanuel residents, I get to hear about things like what it was like for women left behind at home during World War II or what it was like to live on a remote farm in Montana at a time when some families still relied partly on horses for transportation.

Seniors are able to take their memories of the past and turn them into wisdom for the present.  We all benefit from this.  When we have seniors in our immediate families, we learn more about who we are as individuals.  When we pay attention to the seniors in our broader communities, we learn about where those communities came from.  This can help us make critical decisions about where we want to go in the future.

I am lucky because I had and have wonderful grandparents and great grandparents with whom I got to spend time.  Retirement communities like Immanuel can be resources where many families and individuals can come together to learn more about the world and to preserve and record the wisdom of the past.