Eldercare as Art and Ministry

By Irene V. Jackson-Brown

This book addresses the fact that, despite the inevitability of aging, the vast majority of us are ill-prepared for eldercare.

Eldercare as Art and Ministry broadens and deepens an understanding of eldercare as an art and as a ministry. As art, eldercare requires creativity, imagination, and perseverance. Here, ministry is considered in its fullest meaning, to include guiding, administering, serving, waiting upon, or acting as a loved one's agent. Through stories, lessons, and poignant vignettes, Jackson-Brown calls each one of us—whether young or older, ordained or laity, fortunate or less fortunate, prepared or not—to serve and care for an aging loved one. For lay people and professionals, this book is a guide to navigate the challenges of eldercare and to find meaning in this important work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Release date: Oct 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640653085

Irene V. Jackson-Brown

IRENE V. JACKSON-BROWN received the gift of eldercare when she became a caregiver for both parents and two aunts. She now serves and advocates for families and older adults about aging issues and challenges. As a senior-serving professional, she holds certifications from the Society of Certified Senior Advisors (CSA), the Association of Aging Life Care Professionals (ALCA), formerly the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers, and the National Council of Certified Dementia Practitioners (CDP). She is a caregiver, author, speaker, and consultant through her Washington DC based company, Jackson-Brown Associates, LLC (theartofeldercare.com).

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INTRODUCTION

Three Lives,

One Calling

I have had three professional lives, three careers, but one calling. My calling has been expressed as a teacher, mentor, consultant, lay church professional, and entrepreneur. At first glance, these callings may seem completely unrelated.

After earning my PhD in a subfield of cultural anthropology, I began a career in academe. My first real job was not only demanding but fraught with a lot of isms: racism, sexism, and ageism. I was twenty-five when I started to teach at Yale as a lecturer. I was then promoted to assistant professor with the completion of my doctorate. I was married, pregnant, and young. There were few women at Yale then, even in the junior rank. I was even told when I went to the health center for prenatal care that I was the first woman on the Yale faculty to be pregnant. Whether this was true or not, I don’t know. But I was an anomaly. In 1990, thirteen years after leaving Yale as a junior faculty member, I was selected as a research fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts at Yale Divinity School. This was made possible because of a sabbatical granted by the Episcopal Church Center.

Returning to my brief tenure at Yale, in the early 1970s, the campus was an academic maledom—a term I coined. I taught students who had never had a female classmate or professor. There was an unspoken and subtle bias against women, female faculty with children, and married female faculty, mixed with the usual racism against anyone other than white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The message was clear: while I was tolerated, I was not wholly welcome.

Soon after the birth of my son, Guillermo, my undergraduate mentor, Doris McGinty (who was among the first Americans to receive a DPhil in her field from Oxford), asked me to return to Howard University to teach. I felt I owed a debt to my undergraduate alma mater, and returning to Howard would be my chance to give back. I accepted an appointment as an associate professor and project director. And thus began a weekly commute from Stamford, Connecticut, to Washington, DC. During this time, Enrique, my husband, was busy with the founding of the Instituto Pastoral Hispano, a theological training center supported by five dioceses. So, there was a lot of juggling since our son was two years old then. Fortunately, my parents were always available to help on either end, in Washington or Connecticut. Plus, we were fortunate to have a wonderful babysitter for Guillermo, and Enrique was as active a father as he could be, so there was solid support. But this was a challenge for all of us.

At that time, commuting with a young child was nontraditional. Both Enrique and I were needled about it because it wasn’t the norm back then. Even one of Enrique’s colleagues, a priest, let him know that allowing his wife to commute to a job was just not right (let alone allowing her to have a hyphenated name). At Howard, the dean, in particular, seemed to support me, but I felt that he always wondered if I was serious about continuing at Howard after my initial contract expired. I suppose the dean was testing me. I certainly was testing Howard to determine if it was the setting that really felt right. Of course, remaining at Howard would mean a move to Washington, DC. And frankly, I wasn’t sure I wanted that to be the reason for a family move, even though Enrique was willing to relocate.

During my two and a half years at Howard, I was highly productive. I had all the requisite teaching experience and a track record of publications and scholarly activities for tenure track advancement to associate professor. It’s always been my guess that the powers that made advancement decisions felt that I hadn’t paid enough dues. I left Howard disappointed and somewhat bitter after my experiences there and at Yale, and I wondered if academe was where I wanted to spend my professional life. The game of academic life, at least as I experienced it at Yale and Howard, was not one that I wanted to play.

One evening after I left Howard, Enrique and I were invited to dinner at the home of a priest colleague. Another couple, a bishop and his wife, were also there. The bishop, the late Rt. Rev. Elliott Sorge, was an executive at the Episcopal Church Center in New York. He headed the church’s Education for Mission and Ministry Unit. After dinner, while playing a game that somehow involved the New Yorker magazine, Bishop Sorge, who preferred to be addressed as Elliott, mentioned that he needed someone to manage the development of resources and publications in the education unit. I remember asking, Would you be interested in adding a competent African American laywoman to your team? I remember emphasizing both African American and laywoman. There were few African Americans at the Church Center at that time, few laity as professional staff, and few women.

Elliott was familiar with me by my reputation as a consultant to the Office of Black Ministries, a job that had been a right person at the right time event for me. Sometime in 1978, Frank Turner, a priest who headed the Office of Black Ministries, mentioned a hymnal project that he hoped would capture the religious song tradition of African Americans for use in the Episcopal Church and beyond. Enrique happened to be at the meeting when Frank brought up the project, and he said, I know just the right person for the project: Irene, my wife. My dissertation and scholarly research had been focused on worship and the religious musical traditions of African Americans. I knew these traditions firsthand, having grown up in the African American cultural traditions of hymns, spirituals, and gospel music. And so began my association with the Episcopal Church Center (or 815, as it is often known) as a consultant to the Office of Black Ministries and editor of the Episcopal Church’s initial publication in 1979, Lift Every Voice and Sing.

So, when Elliott brought me on staff at 815, it renewed an association that began with the hymnal project. I served as a lay church professional there in several capacities from 1979 to 1998.

In 1997, Enrique was called to a collaboration between the Diocese of Washington and St. John’s, Lafayette Square, as vicar, Mission San Juan and Missioner for Multicultural Ministry Development. We moved from New York to Washington, DC, the place of my birth. But, for me, the return home was traumatic. Besides relocating my father, who was by then paralyzed, it also meant re-confronting significant life losses: my mother’s death, the death of my two closest aunts, and the death of a dear friend. Little did I know then that my return to Washington would crystallize and formalize a ministry.

There are many designations that can describe what I do in the field of aging: senior-serving professional, aging life care professional, applied gerontologist, geriatric care manager, aging specialist. What I do is apply knowledge to individuals and families about issues that surround aging. My professional certifications derive from three entities: the Aging Life Care Association (formerly known as the National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers), the Society of Certified Senior Advisors, and the National Council of Certified Dementia Practitioners.

My most profound personal and family caregiving experience, however, has been as my father’s caregiver. Many influences have helped to shape my professionalization as a caregiver. First, from academe I gained research and problem-solving skills, as well as the skills of a participant-observer. From my tenure at the Episcopal Church Center, an understanding of the ministry of the laity took root. My association with NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science as general editor of NTL’s The Reading Book for Human Relations Training, 8th Edition introduced me to an understanding of human dynamics; my other activities as a consultant there laid the groundwork for my understanding of human behavior.

Continuing education has also enlightened and broadened my work. My most profound educational experiences were a multiyear program on aging at the Washington School of Psychiatry and a fellowship at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. I must include my participation in Georgetown University’s Mini-Medical School with weekly presentations by physicians for a lay audience, as well as countless continuing education courses, including a forty-hour training in basic mediation. These experiences—tools—have all been invaluable in my ministry.

CHAPTER ONE

Dolls and

Nurse’s Kits

My unintentional vocation as a caregiver’s caregiver may well have been foreshadowed when I was a child. Is it likely that those of us who are nurturers, caregivers, are genetically imprinted for caregiving? Or are we formed? Of course, there’s no certain answer to those two questions.

As a little girl, I loved playing with dolls. And I loved nurse’s kits. When I was about seven, all I wanted for Christmas was a specific kind of doll: a black doll that was dressed as a bride and could walk. My adoring parents—I mean Santa—filled my request and left a black bride doll that could walk under the tree. The next Christmas, all I wanted from Santa was a nurse’s kit, a popular toy for girls in the fifties. The toy kit contained a plastic stethoscope, a plastic thermometer, candy pills, and a nurse’s cap. That Christmas, I remember waking up with great anticipation, hoping that Santa had remembered. After all, I knew that I had been a good little girl. I remember bolting from my bed to the Christmas tree to see if Santa had left the highly desired toy. I looked under the tree, but there was no nurse’s kit. Oh, the disappointment. It stings to this day. Santa had forgotten me.

I remember my parents coming into the living room because they heard me crying. They were puzzled. I tried to speak between tears, Santa didn’t leave me anything. My father left the living room and quickly returned carrying the nurse’s kit in his hands. What joy I remember.

For years after, the family story that was told and retold was that my father was not one of Santa’s good helpers. Santa had asked my father to do a favor for him and put the nurse’s kit under our tree so he would not be late delivering toys to all the other children. I am embarrassed to say how long I believed that family lore.

My parents, as far back as I can remember, emphasized that the commercial side of Christmas was not as important as the true meaning of Christmas. They were steadfast about not