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We are born with two ears and one mouth. There may be a sound reason for that. It is hardly a conversation when you are talking to someone and they don’t let you get a word in edge-wise.

Listening is about showing the other person or persons respect. You value their opinion enough to listen to what they have to say. When you are constantly cutting someone off in the middle of a conversation you are really telling them they are not worth listening to.

This can be a real problem at any facility. Whether you are an executive, staff member, clinician, or groundskeeper, you have to be able to communicate with one another in order to get the job done.

Everyone feels like there isn’t enough time in the day so “keep it short and sweet when you are talking to me”. There may be times during the day where short and sweet is the best answer, but if you portray yourself like that all the time, then be prepared to be cut out of the daily communication loop.

The best information in any organization travels by word of mouth. The best ideas to boost productivity are hashed out in conversation before they are reduced to a memo. The same is true when the company plan isn’t executing as intended – the team gets together to discuss the problem and find a solution. However, if one person attempts to dominate the conversation it is the equivalent of driving into a sinkhole and then creativity grinds to a halt and only the dinner bell can rescue you. Many good ideas come from being a good listener. So be a Contributor and not a Dominator the next time you are participating in a conversation.

The holidays can cause a problem of overstimulation. Especially persons with dementia need help to be able to respond positively to the flood of activities; otherwise under or over stimulation can cause them to withdraw, decreasing their responsiveness – or to panic, increasing their unwanted agitated behaviors.

While living in a healthcare facility, Angelina had a mysterious visitor who came by like an angel every holiday. She always brought a bouquet of fresh red and white carnations. First, the guest would hold the flowers to Angelina’s nose so she could enjoy smelling them; then the guest would give the bouquet to Angelina placing it in her lap. Angelina sat in her wheelchair like a queen beaming smiles as the guest pushed her around the room. They stopped to give other residents, or staff members, a flower of their own, to smell and hold. This tradition brightened and soothed the long days at holiday time inside a care facility.

You can communicate your own holiday mood with less stress, and more managed care, and also feel more celestial like an angel. Here are some suggestions that will help you focus on one sense at a time, in order to stimulate the senses that are connected with a holiday activity:

Draw the person’s attention to the smell of fresh flowers. This can stimulate the person to put the flowers in water.

Draw the person’s attention to the smell of an orange by opening the skin. This can stimulate the person to hold the orange, peel the orange, and eat the orange with relish and remember the orange in his or her Christmas stocking.

Draw the person’s attention to the sight of a green tinsel string with a red jingle bell attached. Help them remember a holiday story, such as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” with the sound of reindeer on the roof.

Get the person’s attention by focusing on his/her needs and sitting beside him/her at the holiday dinner. Pick up their favorite food and invite the person to smell it. Have a small table top tree nearby. This can stimulate the person to hang a tree ornament on the tree.

Draw the attention to the movement of dancing bubbles as you blow them. This can stimulate the person to blow a bubble, laugh as they pop, reach out to catch a bubble, and clap together as they pop.

A holiday sing-along can over stimulate the person you care for. So start by getting their attention with a one-on-one heart-to-heart lullaby conversation. Echo the voice you hear singing to you. Act as a compass point – orient – redirect. Find something in common to point out like – we both are wearing red today.

This post is inspired by Carol Bowlby Sifton’s Navigating the Alzheimer’s Journey: A Compass for Caregiving (Baltimore, MD: Health Professions Press, Inc., 2004), 293-358.

More helpful activities can be found in As Long as You Sing, I’ll Dance: The bond not the burden – the blessing of reciprocal caregiving by Julia Soto Lebentritt. Available at www.Amazon.com and her website www.reciprocalcare.com

“I think I have a lily going to sleep,” my mother would say in the early stages of her dementia. Why didn’t I realize then that she was talking about death of her own brain cells due to Alzheimer’s as well as death of her flowers? A long denied stigma especially in the medical world of advanced technologies and interventions, death may become a friend, a destination like home with a welcome mat at the gate spread with peace and hopeful rest.

I wrote “As Long as You Sing, I’ll Dance” to help caregivers help themselves and the people who suffer with illnesses (often hidden as well as terminal) understand and cope with death. Hospice care for the dying goes hand-in-hand with understanding and accepting incurable illnesses and the common mortal factors of our existence.

But how can we finally understand death? There are usually two or more headlines daily announcing or related to death (often the senseless violent and brutal variety). As readers/surfers of these endless morbid headlines we are offered no way to understand and process the tsunami with the morning cup of coffee.

From “As Long as You Sing, I’ll Dance”:

I see in the springtime, luxuriant irises blooming. Again, I will have to let them go to the wind and the changeful weather reciting the words of an old haiku I wrote to some invisible presence years ago:

So many irises

Go home silently with you

Surrendering perfume

I have dealt with my own transience while writing poems that help me stay in the present moment…. We often experience caregiving while letting go. So we must find peaceful ways to let a person know what’s happening and make clear closures.

When caregivers and families find a way to communicate together that enriches both giver and receiver, there is peace in the house. A peaceful understanding of our transitions is a benediction beyond words.

“As Long as You Sing, I’ll Dance” is available at www.amazon.com and www.reciprocalcare.com