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 Photo Elliott Burr/ Special To The Town CrierLos Altos Hills resident Linda Conover paired with her brother John Jenkins to share their eldercare experience in a book. Los Altos Hills resident Linda Conover has found a new calling late in life, one born of great family stress. She is interested in baby boomers increasingly called to a new role – the “Silver Tsunami,” as she put it – of grown-up children caring for their parents. Conover and her siblings found themselves playing just that part for their own family and could have used some advice on how to rise to the occasion. She has written a book informed by that experience, “LifeSmart Eldercare: A Guide for Caregivers and Their Families.”
Conover is in the fourth year of a leave of absence from her job teaching sixth grade at Santa Rita School. She has been taking care of her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, and her father, who has frontotemporal dementia.
Her father cared for her mother for the first decade of the matriarch’s illness, maintaining their independence in Southern California. When he was diagnosed with dementia, Conover said, “My dad just sat very still and said, ‘Bad news, bad news.’”
Her parents’ situation – particularly their ability to care for themselves – changed quickly after that.
“It has included all kinds of not-so-pleasant adventures,” Conover said.
She and her brothers, John and Robert, rallied to support their parents, reading books on eldercare and caregiving. She described them as treatises that “we didn’t have time to wade through. They described the situation but didn’t give advice.”
The family built up piles and piles of information and a few years in, Conover realized they had a resource they could share with others. She and her brother, John Jenkins, went into business together to produce a text.
“Our aim was to put together a user-friendly management system for people who have caregiving issues, particularly with parents. You can read it quickly and implement it,” she said, noting that her background as a teacher guided her toward no-nonsense, immediately applicable instructions.
Their project became “LifeSmart Eldercare,” a nontraditional text that combines booklike elements with practical, hands-on features. Ten sections, divided by tabs, address aspects of caregiving aimed at adult children, and offer information, planning ideas and strategies to implement those ideas.
“We needed this – we’ve written what we desperately needed,” she said.
The bright, blue and green manual features interactive aspects, including worksheets to fill in with critical financial information and a section of assessments, meant to help adult children determine their parents’ ability to care for themselves, drive and potential need for in-home care or assisted-living placement.
“If your parents are like our parents, they don’t want to tell you anything,” she said, musing that her parents had grown up in a more private era, when one was less likely to ask for help.
By recording and preserving fundamental information – for instance, which Social Security checks arrive, where bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes exist – and doing it while parents are still healthy enough to convey that information, children can save themselves future trouble.
Both of Conover’s parents are nonverbal at this point, so she can rely only on the resources she already documented. By organizing the pertinent information in one place, she can access her records at a moment’s notice.
“You can carry it with you from place to place. You have to have all the info there,” she said.
Toward the back of the manual, Conover and Jenkins included resources alphabetized by issue and where to seek out state agencies. Each section starts with an anecdote of her family’s experience with the given topic, and not all of the sections stick to immediate crisis-response. One section, “Caregiver Burnout,” offers planning and information but also points out that it happens anyway.
“We’re on this odyssey not of our own choosing, but through circumstance,” Conover said.
In the caregiver section, she recounts how a few happy encounters with her mother helped her cope with a grueling weekly commute to Southern California to help her parents handle their health concerns as they attempted to continue living in their longtime home in Simi Valley.
“Remembering the few happy days recounted above reminds me of the warm special times we shared and makes me aware that my efforts did not go unnoticed and were not in vain,” she concludes in that section.
For more information or to purchase the book, visit www.livesmarteldercare.com or e-mail
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Contact Eliza Ridgeway at
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