May is Older Americans Month, Celebrate a Senior Whenever Possible with Terry and Roy

May is Older Americans month. It was a proclamation that was brought in 1963 by JFK, and became this National Senior Citizens month, in 1963. A couple years later, President Johnson turned it into Older Americans month. it was it was to raise awareness and encourage community involvement. A third of all seniors lived in poverty, with very few social programs available to support them.

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Full Transcript 

May is Older Americans Month, Celebrate a Senior Whenever Po...

Fri, 5/14 8:23PM • 23:17

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

talked, seniors, starting, independent living, people, scam, decision, apartment, downsize, downsizing, mom, thought, live, phone, silverware, computers, rid, memories, typewriter, storage

SPEAKERS

Terry, Roy Barker

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of educational I'm Roy,

Terry  00:11

I'm Terry.

Roy Barker  00:12

So we are the podcast of course we are chronicling, you know, not only our my journey through aging, but also know the the, our parents journey, I'm fortunate to have both of my parents still living and Terry's mom is still alive. So, you know, but there are things that are starting to manifest themselves that we will talk about a little bit. And, you know, let people know, number one, you're not the only one that's dealing with it. But also, maybe we can give some helpful tips on how to how to navigate this, as well as we bring some awesome guests on from time to time to be able to talk to you. So

Terry  00:49

yeah, and we're, we're pretty excited, because may is actually the older Americans month, it was a proclamation that was brought in 1963 by JFK, and became this national citizens senior citizens month, in 1963. And then a couple years later, President Johnson turned it into older Americans month. So and because, let's see, it was it was to raise awareness and encourage community involvement. But there were like a third of all seniors lived in poverties, with very few social programs available to support them. So that's kind of why it came about. And they did this to honor older Americans. And now that we're getting up there, we want to be honored.

Roy Barker  01:48

There's a lot of stuff came out of that back in that timeframe. And I don't know, my history escapes me. But I know the one thing I used to be involved in was the, the Ombudsman act. And that was something that was dictated by the Older Americans Act back in the late 60s, early 70s. And basically, all that does, it just adds an extra level of protection for seniors that are anybody really anybody that's in a nursing home, if they don't feel like that they're being treated fairly, or anything is going on, they can always reach out to, to an ombudsman. So that's a, you know, an awesome thing. And we were talking a little bit before we turn the tape on that, you know, it's fine me growing up, I knew people that had actually written and covered wagons, run in wagons, and then also had flown on airplanes. And, you know, I was just thinking about the things that we experienced as kids that that our kids wouldn't even know about now, like driving a car without an air conditioner. I mean, I didn't even have an air conditioner in my pickup until, you know, probably the might not teen 90s.

Terry  03:00

And was it a stick shift? It

Roy Barker  03:01

wasn't for me. It was a manual, which that's another thing. The other thing that was weird. The other day I heard was bit seats, you know, used to all cars had the front was a bench. And I you know, I knew that not many of them. But they said that they are making a comeback, actually, part of the problem they say was just hard to fit a airbag and the safety functions in that middle seat was one of the main reasons that they went away. But anyway, I never thought about that. But you know, the home telephones, you know, I was talking to somebody. Yeah, I was talking to somebody the other day. And I said, well used to, you know, when you called somebody at home, you had to ask, Hey, is so and so there. And, you know, they just say, well, that's back before there were cell phones, because now, you know, everybody has a cell phone, you call them directly, you know,

Terry  03:53

you don't have to bypass dad to get you know, go ahead and speak

Roy Barker  03:58

that. And you know, of course the rotary dial phones, we talked about that. And me growing up, you know, we live didn't live that far out. But we lived about 10 miles out of town, and we were actually on an eight party line. So that means that there were eight different homes that use the same phone line. We had the different rings, you know, one short me Excuse me two shorter one long and but the thing is, you can pick up the phone and you know, if somebody else was talking, you just had to hang it up and wait on them or vice versa. You know, when you're a teenager, and they would pick your neighbor picked up the phone and want to make a phone call and you were on there talking to your boyfriend or girlfriend you know, they'd pick up three or four times and say, Oh, I gotta make a phone call. You got to get off this phone or something like that.

Terry  04:45

Well, we had we had a teen mine. So we had two phone numbers. Yeah. And I used to have to, I used to have to put pillows on top of the phone so it wouldn't ring loud and mom would know you know, but she always knew that. I'd be Hiding in the closet trying to make it real quiet and she'd follow the phone cord. She'd be like, all right handed. Oh, you know, she doesn't do.

Roy Barker  05:08

Yeah. So it's interesting even in now, even in our lifetime, all the advances and you know, the typewriters going into computers because back even when, you know, when I was in high school, we had the old manual typewriters and you're lucky some people had the electric but still. Now we're nobody even knows what a typewriter is anymore.

Terry  05:32

Yeah, we did. Oh my gosh, I learned the keyboard. I had we had a we had electric typewriters in junior high school. But I learned the keyboard with there was a record. Yes, not a vinyl, it was an album that was playing that would would just speak, you know, Jay, Jay Jay, and it would just kind of do it, you know, in a musical way. And that's, that's how we learned how to do it. Mr. Party. I remember his name, he remembers me, I'm sure.

Roy Barker  06:04

Well, someone else you got to go do this week as you got to go out and tour a Independent Living senior community. And you know, we're not going to get divulge a lot of information, just saying that, you know, mom is looking at, you know, maybe it's time for them to make a move. So her and Terry got out this week, and I'll let you tell a little bit about your experience a tour and over there.

Terry  06:30

Yeah, it was very interesting. And it, I didn't realize that I had to go into a different building. But you know, I just pulled up to the first one that I saw, and it was, it was the assisted living area. So all the buildings were connected, there's an independent living, there's assisted living, and there's a Memory Care Unit. And, and they're all connected. So I kind of got to tour the whole place. And, you know, I say now, you know, I can't wait to live in something like that, because it was really nice. I'm beautiful dining room they have I mean, it, you know, a nice apartment, two bedroom apartment. Beautiful flooring, huge bathrooms, and the showers, you know, with no rail at the bottom, you know, so they can get if, if they're, if they're just wheelchair accessible. big, beautiful. I know, it's a hard decision to make. Because if you've lived, like, you're, your mom and Jim have lived where they are for like 25 years, 3025 30 years and have accumulated a lot of things. So just having to go through that is just such a daunting task. But yeah,

Roy Barker  07:54

that's what I was gonna talk about a little bit, too. It's, you know, the decision to do this is big and within itself, but then there is that there's the downsizing that goes along with that. I mean, as far as just stuff that

Terry  08:11

life accumulation. Yeah.

Roy Barker  08:14

You know, and I was fortunate about six or seven years ago, when I made a conscious decision to downsize myself, you know, to move out here where we are now, the in the beginning, it was kind of scary, because like I said, I lived on, you know, I had a pretty decent sized house on about two acres, I had two barns with tools, ladders, you know, yard equipment, everything you could imagine. And it was kind of scary, but I will tell you that once I made the decision, and once everything was gone, and I got out here abroad, probably 25% of the clothes at our own my laptop and Abed and that was really it. And it was very liberating not to have stuff to worry about all the time. And so anyway, it's just have you

Terry  09:06

have you made that you helped me make the conscious decision conscious decision to downsize as well into a storage unit? Yeah. I mean, I still have some of my stuff. But yeah, I, it's, it was very freeing not to have to be with because I just don't know what to do with everything, all these memories, all these sentimental things with sentimental value. I can't I don't want to get rid. I don't want to make the decision to get rid of it.

Roy Barker  09:33

Yeah, and I know we talked about that a little bit, you know, because I've talked with mom and said, Look, you know, you can make the decision to move to assisted to move to the Independent Living apartment, but the reality of when you're going to be ready to move once you clear out, you know, this big house of all the, you know, massive furniture that they can't take with them. It's gonna be it's gonna take time and it's not i'm not just Saying that for her, but for anybody, it just takes time to decide what you want to keep. And, you know, the reality is some of it, you're never going to use again, that's what we talked about, I know that, you know, you still have a bunch of the girls stuff, and one that's taken up a lot of space that, you know, we talked about taking pictures, because it's hard for you to go over there and nicely reminisce through it, that, you know, if you took pictures and stored it on something like one node or one drive or even once that other, the one with the elephant, that you

10:39

I use it so often Yeah,

Roy Barker  10:40

anyway, it's another storage platform that you can store and file and kind of categorize stuff. But that was just a, you know, and I wasn't making light of it. But I was really, you know, being honest that at least if you have that stuff on your phone, or your tablet or your computer, it would be a lot easier to reminisce through than going over to storage building and trying to go through it. Now. That's the other thing. It's different for a dude versus a mom,

Terry  11:08

because you know, I want to be able to touch Yeah, well, a picture. I don't know that that's going to, but it might be able to go ahead.

Roy Barker  11:15

No, I was just gonna say because when I, whenever I made that decision, I call the kids up and said, Look, I'm you know, I'm downsizing, I'm getting out of here, anything you want, come get it. And if they didn't feel strongly enough about it, then, you know, it didn't mean that much to me. So it was it was fairly easy to do that, but I know it can be it can be traumatic.

Terry  11:37

Yeah. And, and I mean, my kids are still kind of, you know, one of them is in California, so she's not going to come get stuff yet, you know, unless I just absolutely get rid of it. And the other ones kind of in a transitional phase. Neither one of them are married, so they're not really ready to take some of this stuff. And I know that they'll want it later. I know they will, just like my mom did, that's why I have so much the

Roy Barker  12:03

mom still got all my stuff because I didn't want it. So Oh, that's we may

Terry  12:07

need to go look at it. I might need an edge storage.

Roy Barker  12:15

But I think it's a you know, it's a valid point just for people to take is that it's never really too early to start kind of paring down and finding creative ways to hang on to those memories. Because, you know, the, well if we live long enough, most of us are going to have to downsize into, you know, some kind of an apartment where we can get some help. So we're not going to be able to carry everything with us. But you know, with it's, it's funny, because we survive, and I know you've got you know, you've got a couple storage buildings with stuff. But the reality is that we live our day to day life with, you know, very limited stuff with where we're at. But again, we take the we have other stuff to do, you know, outside we get to enjoy the wildlife and things like that. So there's different I guess it's different priorities to once you get to a certain match, it's not as much of the entertaining and things like that, you know, we

Terry  13:13

they don't do it these days. And if they do, it's, you know, paper plates and plant you know, that that I think is a great priority, not not having to pull out the child. I mean, I've had a few sets of China. My mother had about eight to 10 I you know, who knows? When when she moved to independent living, I think maybe now she has three, maybe four? I don't know.

Roy Barker  13:36

Yeah, when I came out here, I think I kept one plate one bowl in one cup. And I had some old funky silverware for a long time. That didn't work but mainly plastic. But anyway, yeah, paper plates, paper bowls, and that's one thing my mom does. First she thought I'll turn it into a caveman because at her house one day, I was just eating right out of a can eat and something out of a cannon. She got it. She started fussing. I'm like why dirty up the dishes and silverware when I could just eat it out of a cannon throw it away and we can move on with something else. But anyway, yeah. And there's there are services that help with that. I think the lady gave y'all some recommendations,

Terry  14:22

downsize and downsizing companies that figure out what you need. And if you need to get a hold of somebody to do an estate sale for you. But it's just the going through process. The downsizing what what, what else? Do you know what all that downsizer does?

Roy Barker  14:44

No, they just help you. Yeah, it's

Terry  14:46

getting to me. I

Roy Barker  14:47

think it's a it's a non family member trying to help you because unfortunately, you know, as a family member when you try to help somebody else. It doesn't always go as we plan. So it's good to have that. Third party, but also I think they, you know, they, they have a process that they go through. And when you look through stuff, you know, there's three distinct categories. And this is why this is why I recommend starting early, The sooner, the better, because there's a go through everything. And then there's stuff that you know, you just want to throw away and just get rid of it, then there's stuff that you definitely want to keep. And then there's that stuff that's in the middle that's like, and I'm not really sure. So what it does, it kind of gives you some time to get kind of get right. But the thought of this is that you know, get the stuff you knew you don't want out of there, then you can see what you've got. That's kind of on the fence that may be list that, then maybe you can start getting better with getting rid of some of it because it is it's a process. I mean, some people, you know, like you said, they've been in that house for 30 something years, so very attached to everything. But then also, you know, you feel like you're giving up your independence, and you feel like, you know, you're being pulled out of your home and a lot of stuff like, you know, there's just a lot of negative emotions. I think we are of the generation. And, you know, when I moved out here, I'd also looked at some apartments in town, and there was a bunch of people our age that were at these apartments, I had made this decision, like I'm done with that I'm ready, you know, to simplify. So I think that there's an age group of us that, you know, kind of are coming through the system now that are starting to get into the system that made this conscious decision a lot earlier in life just like hey, it's not, it's really not worth the stuff. You know, we're more about the experiences and what kind of fun we can go have instead of, you know, collecting stuff that collects dust

Terry  16:46

collect memories, not stuff.

Roy Barker  16:48

Yeah, exactly.

Terry  16:49

I practice what I preach. Right, right.

Roy Barker  16:54

You're slowly working

16:57

to get there on now.

Roy Barker  16:59

So let's talk about some episodes. We've just released a couple good ones. If you haven't had time, go check them out. But we Patrick O'Malley with the guitar

Terry  17:09

and tire picking lessons and talked about music, the brain and the health benefits with music. And it was very interesting.

Roy Barker  17:19

Yeah. And then prior to that we talked about a it was an actual victim of a scam that she wrote a book but she had been taken for quite quite a bit of money. It's it's a good listen and a good book to read romance scam, you have romance, but we've also got one coming up in the near future that's going to highlight a it was like a next door neighbor and a caregiver that were working together to take advantage of a person when they went to the hospital and her

Terry  17:49

aunt Debbie it that that's very interesting to know, I just can't believe all these scams, yeah, you just have to be careful at all ages. But for older people, too, they're just so vulnerable, getting calls and texts out of the blue.

Roy Barker  18:05

And it's just, you know, I got a call this morning about, you know, you could tell it was a robo voice that, you know, you're you're in trouble. And you need to call the authorities before they come get you in, you know, at people that are, you know, maybe a little older, they may think, Oh my gosh, and then of course they have the ones that like the medic, you know, if you don't call us we're gonna do away with your Social Security or your Medicare trying to scare people into it. So now there's a lot of stuff, a lot of crazy stuff. So we always recommend that. You know, before you answer any emails, or do anything drastic, always get somebody to help you take a look, because there's so much scamming going on. Well, and in the news, it's not necessarily nailed or scam, but it's related with this colonial pipeline. I mean, there's somebody hijack their computers, and I think they ended up paying them $5 million to finally get it released. So but the same thing can happen even to you know, to seniors, with them getting their identities, there's a lot of bad stuff. But another great episode we've got coming up is the life review and

Terry  19:14

life review a hospice musical. Yeah. Now you wouldn't think that hospice would be able to be turned into a musical but it's a lovely story. You will laugh You will cry You it all, every emotion that you can possibly imagine. You'll go you'll go through it. And, I mean, they they were starting to, I guess this time last year, maybe maybe 1416 months ago, they were starting to perform it for for everybody and then COVID hit so now they're doing some virtual virtual things and workshops and, and getting into 2020 we've been actually saying for so oh my god. From the show, which is, it's very good. So I was in tears.

Roy Barker  20:03

Yeah, it's, it's going to be good. So, kind of tune in, hopefully, it'll probably be within the next two to three weeks, two to four weeks that we'll be releasing that, but got a lot of great episodes that are coming up. So yeah, just pay attention, and we're gonna try to start recording more, you know, we kind of got busy and got away from talking about our story and telling our story about how we're coming through things, you know, not only with us, we're trying to get healthier, you know, one of our kind of our tag lines is that we don't want to outlive our wellness. And so what does that mean? You know, it means for me to maybe drop some weight to get off some of the, you know, medications and to get a little healthier, so that I can go into an older age a little stronger, and, you know, in good shape. So, we're gonna try to start talking about you know, a lot of those things as well we we've started meditation has been really good for us. We tried to do about 10 minutes in the morning and 10 at night, but I've never really been into that. And it's always been hard for me, but I've sat down made myself do it. And it's starts my day out really well. And then of course finishes up the day. kind of balanced to suddenly sleep like a rock Yeah, yeah, definitely kind of clears my head before you know, I don't go in there and talk. He's like, go on there all wound up. And dairies trying to go to sleep, and I'll be talking and telling her all my ideas and thoughts and stuff of the day, and she's like, Oh, my gosh, I'm trying to sleep. So anyway, it's it's some, it's not for everybody, you know, everything that we talked about, it's not going to resonate with everybody. But if it's something that you've thought about, just give it a shot, and it's not, it's not something that you just sit down and do once and get a feel for it, you know, I would challenge everybody to, you know, to take a week, do it every day, same time. And you, you know, some there's days when my mind races and wanders more than others. So, again, you're not going to be perfect at it every day every time. But if you just work at it long enough, I think it really does have a good effect. So anyway, hopefully we'll bring some other good messages like that.

Terry  22:21

Yeah, and if you if you have a topic that you want us to cover if you want us to find a guest for an upcoming episode, please get ahold of us go on our Facebook group. Twitter, Instagram, wherever you find us. We are everywhere.

Roy Barker  22:42

Alright, well that's gonna do it for another episode of educational Of course, I am Roy Terry, you can find us at www.ageucational.com We are also on all the major podcast platforms as well as all the social media networks and live recording us live but the recording of this episode will go up on our YouTube channel when the episode does go live. So until next time, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Thanks

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