My Grandfather Provided Elderly Dementia Care to My Grandmother
Fast-forward 60 years, and my grandfather had taken on the role of elderly
caregiver for my grandmother who had Alzheimer’s. How he loved that
woman. She ended up living in a nursing home so my grandfather could get
some rest, but he would still go there every morning and have breakfast
with her. He would then take her on a ride around town, they would eat
lunch, nap at home and he would take her back and eat dinner with her
and tuck her in bed at night. My grandmother called him a “good
Joe” and “the man who takes care of me.”
As many elderly family caregivers do, my grandfather died before my grandmother.
His body just flat wore out.
Without Options, Another Family Member in Assisted Living
Not long after his death, and my grandmother’s death, my father-in-law—a
veteran—was diagnosed with frontal temporal lobe dementia. He was
a handful—too much of a handful for my mother-in-law, who started
looking into assisted-living options, and ultimately placed him in a nursing
home that provided care for veterans, where he later died.
We hated for him to go to a nursing home, but we didn’t know what
else to do. At the time, we didn’t have information about the Aid
and Attendance Benefit, that helps veterans and their families pay for
in-home elder care. We had children, and we had jobs. Even if we’d
had time to take care of him ourselves, we didn’t know how.
A New Calling: Providing In-Home Elderly Assistance
It was shortly after this that I started looking for a way for families
to get support during their loved ones’ long-term illnesses.
I didn’t know of any companies that provided elderly care services
that truly helped families, but I knew that I wanted to offer services
like that to families just like mine. A friend led me to the elder care
resources on the Home Helpers website. To my delight, here was a home
health care provider that did just what I was looking for. So, in 2006,
I launched Home Helpers Georgia and Alabama.
The rest, as they say, is history.