The New Old Age - Caring and Coping
December 24, 2010, 7:29 pm
When Traditions Must Change
By JOSHUA TAPPER

Mary Devitt’s family counted on certain traditions each Christmas. Her mother cooked the entire meal and served it on the good china, carefully arrayed on a tablecloth she’d appliqued with holly sprigs. The centerpiece was always the same, a Royal Doulton figurine of a little boy with a Christmas tree. Her father sliced the turkey, using the carving set reserved for special occasions.
NBC James Stewart and Donna Reed in a scene from the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“The turkey dressing was the same every year,” Ms. Devitt recalled. “If Mom tried to change it, there would be a great hue and cry that it was different.”

But eight years ago Ms. Devitt’s parents moved into a retirement home in Ottawa, Canada. Her father died three years later. Her mother, Helen Peart, the chief holiday planner, is now 89 and has dementia. So the onus to carry on the family traditions has fallen to their children.

Even when both parents were alive, Christmas had become “bittersweet and kind of melancholy,” Ms. Devitt said. “It was lovely they could come and we could still carry on the traditions, but it was bitter in that they weren’t the focus of the traditions anymore.”

The holidays are a time when family traditions take on greater relevance, said Denise Burnette, a professor of social work at Columbia University who specializes in older adults and their families. But at this time of year, adult children often must wrestle with unsettling questions. Should they hold on to cherished family traditions as long as possible? When and how must these rituals change to accommodate aging family members?

For a while, Ms. Devitt’s family celebrated Thanksgiving and Easter at the retirement home, so that her parents could still serve as hosts, but in a more supportive environment. While the family lost out on the comforts of home, at least they were together.

“At the holidays you want to create a feeling, an emotion, an atmosphere,” said Linda George, associate director of the Center for Study of Aging and Human Development at Duke University. “But it doesn’t mean you have to do things exactly the way they’ve been done in the past. It’s the feelings that are important, not the details that elicit those feelings.”

Reclaiming those feelings can be difficult when children are scattered across the country, when an aging parent is living with dementia or simply unable to muster the stamina for a day’s celebration. So Dr. George suggests that families focus on what she describes as the most important goal: showing aging relatives they’re not forgotten.

On Christmas Eve day, Jere Armen, whose own parents died four years ago, plans to travel from Branford, Conn., to visit her mother-in-law and father-in-law, 93 and 94 respectively, at their retirement home in nearby Stamford for a pre-Christmas celebration with food and presents. Other family members will arrive at the retirement home throughout the holidays.

This past Thanksgiving, at a family event in Massachusetts that Ms. Armen’s in-laws were too sick to attend, the entire clan raised a toast to recognize their absence.

“What matters, and it’s the bottom line about the holidays, is that we all feel we belong to our family, that people remember us and there’s a connection,” said Barbara Moscowitz, chief geriatric social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Often that means adapting to a family’s changing needs and downplaying the importance of specific practices or objects. “Rituals change,” Dr. Burnett said.

Even something so basic as gift-giving can be adapted. In advance of the holiday, Ms. Moscowitz said, frail grandparents can be provided with gifts to give to grandchildren who will be visiting. Children who cannot visit can still unwrap their presents while their grandparents listen on the phone.

Cognitive decline shouldn’t obstruct an older adult’s participation in the holidays, Ms. Moscowitz said. Even if the senior can’t understand Christmas activities, the family still provides comfort.

This Christmas, Ms. Devitt will try an adaptation of her own. She has invited a woman from her mother’s retirement home to join the family for dinner at her brother’s house in Ottawa. She hopes the woman will be able to help her mother recollect the celebration after they return to the retirement home.

Roles change, and so do traditions. Caregiving families find ways to create new ones.

“When someone has the good fortune of still belonging to a family,” Ms. Moscowitz said, “every possible effort should be made to bring that family together.”

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