“Falling in Love with the Elderly” Season 2 – Episode 6. Released on February 10
INTRO
Today I’m in Naperville, IL with Jana Larkin, who’s always considered herself a businesswoman. Her background includes working in sales for WABC TV – New York, to designing and building a retail center. While she found great success in these areas she never thought that caregiving would be where she would find her true fulfillment.
BUMPER:
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.
This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.
This is “Waking Up In America.”
TAJCI
I’m here with a good friend of mine Jana Larkin and I want to talk to you about that time that comes in our lives when, we realize that … we’re looking at our parents and realize the years that we have together are growing fewer and the time together shorter and so we willingly make that shift to make more time to spend with them or at least be present in the time that we get to spend with them.
Sometimes were too afraid to face that the end imminent because it also scares us to think about her own mortality and examine our own life.
That’s what I wanted to talk about with my friend Jana who offered to share her wonderful experience about taking care of aging parents. Thank you so much Jana!
JANA
You’re so welcome. I worked for WABC-TV for a few years. Had a short but very rewarding career where I met Regis, your friend, and Kathy Lee.
TAJCI
Isn’s that a wonderful connection?
JANA
Oh my Gosh
TAJCI
And we’ve been coming to Jana’s house. Every time we are in the area we stay with you What a crazy, small world!
JANA
It is. It really is.
Primarily I raised our kids. Bob, I think I said, has been a financial advisor for 31 years… And there just came a time in our life when Bob’s mother had Alzheimer’s disease, was cared for by her son Dave and his wife for two years in Larry and Rosemarie’s home. But then Rosemarie really required some more care. And so they had her in a nursing home out East but it didn’t wasn’t a good fit and fortunately a friend of mine, her mother was in a nursing home here and I’ve heard for years what a great place this was and so kind of had these little ideas already coming up in my mind that maybe that would be a great place for Rosemarie.
TAJCI
Amazing how that works, isn’t it?
JANA
Yeah
TAJCI
So, let’s look at that footage from that time when we shared in the summer
BOB
My mom and dad were really terrific parents. Raised eight of us. were a great example of a man and a woman that were really in love. So, to see my brothers and sisters we all get along with all of our spouses it’s a big tribute to my mom and dad. To be willing to take care of them is a privilege.
TAJCI
Well, what I hear you say is that there’s tremendous amount of personal growth and healing that that goes into when you… like you said the man who taught you how to drive, you’re taking his keys away that’s a huge complex issue of dealing with all these things and with the relationship with your father to care about him.
BOB
We put certain aspects of our life on hold you can argue that but we’ve enriched our lives in other ways
JANA
In so many ways. I guess what we can say is we embraced this opportunity eventually. It really became a passion for us we fell in love with the elderly people that we met at St. Patrick’s, We have had some very tender moments with his mom and his dad that we never would have had if we hadn’t really…
BOB
Welcomed them here.
JANA
Yes. For me I think, when Larry and I would visit the nursing home and visit his wife, I fell in love with the old people there. I really fell in love with them in a way that I didn’t expect. And then they would be thanking me for bringing my father in law and saying: oh you’re such a great daughter-in-law and I’m thinking it’s really not me I don’t know…
I know what it is I think that it was Larry and Rosemarie who set the tone of love in a family. My mom and dad thirteen years ago had both of their mothers in their home, so the example was set for me and I guess it just became intuitive to do it and when I was at the nursing home and I was with all these lovely people I was filled up with gratitude for the opportunity to be there and I never knew that I loved old people I don’t know if there’s a better way of saying it but I really do and I have a much greater appreciation for what they can teach us about loyalty about commitment in marriage. Larry and Rosemarie would have been married 65 years three days ago and that’s huge. And he was committed to her to the very last day And taught us how to care for someone you really love.
(BACK AT INTERVIEW)
TAJCI
Jana, when you said at that time when we were sharing in the summer that it wasn’t you I felt all you. Perhaps it was a part of you that you hadn’t you weren’t aware of?
JANA
It was me. And I think it was a process. A process for me to figure out I think it first started to come to me when I realized the fulfillment I was receiving from this task that had come into my life.
TAJCI
That you didn’t ask for.
JANA
I did. I volunteered.
TAJCI
But it’s like you weren’t planning on it and you are a very talented businesswoman in everything that you do… The first time I met you, you were organizing Advent Tea for the ladies and with such excellence and you do run a business as well. And you raised a family run a household with great skill
JANA
You make me sound really pretty good thank you!
TAJCI
That’s what you are, who you are! Absolutely! So you couldn’t have planned this as a part of your life.
JANA
No I didn’t. And I think with time I realized that I thought of myself as a businesswoman in sales and marketing. My father owned his own business and I always admired his line of work. My mother was a nurse very nurturing but you know what I wasn’t able to go watch her in surgery so I think maybe part of me thought well I couldn’t relate to that necessarily that vocation so I started thinking okay well I must be meant for the business world and so I started pursuing that I’ve had some great experiences as I did with WABC-TV. You have this path but then it doesn’t necessarily end up being as gratifying as you think or maybe it’s not really your skill set as much as something else and then
TAJCI
Or maybe a part of it is we protect the life we think we want to live or what we think we want it to look like
JANA
Yes yes. And I found out differently that what’s really fulfilling for me is really being nurturing. Receiving nurturing, giving nurturing I don’t know exactly how to say it.
TAJCI
Every time we come visit you’re just so such a great host and not host as a role, just who you are you play with my kids and they love you so much because that is a part of who you. And that, Mr. Larry helped you
JANA
Discovered that! Yes he did or just the whole situation. It took me a while to discover who I am as a person. And what really my life is supposed to be about
TAJCI
And embrace it.
JANA
Absolutely
TAJCI
So how do you… you shared with me Mr. Larkin’s favorite songs and there I went back home and I found the song and I will sing it for you and as I was doing the song few days later you sent a notice out that Mr. Larkin passed away. So what happened then? You had you kids and then they went off to college right in their transition there was Mr. Larkin, and now your house is quiet.
JANA
Very quiet. Well… I’m not rushing into anything but what I’m doing is spending more time reflecting on what I’ve learned while doing the caregiving I have to say I wasn’t the only one care giving his siblings, Bob’s siblings, there is seven of them came out very regularly and they were a huge support
TAJCI
And you also shared that you did ask for help from the community.
JANA
Yes and you know what that does? It just connects you even more with your sister in law’s brother in law’s your community at large that when they come and they help you and now I’m more in tune to helping them when I see somebody who’s got an aging parent, maybe I can call them and say: Do you need a night off? Let me come and sit with your parents and play cards or whatever.
TAJCI
Yes that is a beautiful you know giving and receiving constantly, the flow of giving and receiving but I really want to I’m really interested in this quiet time this Jana now not being afraid to take the silence and look inside and do some hard examination, self-examination come up with… what do you come up with?
JANA
Well I’m still coming up with that business side of me. I am and that’s fun I mean there’s a few things that like to to try to be invested in but I’m taking more personal time to reflect how I can give to the world in a way that is beneficial to the world but true to myself and fulfilling to myself because it’s not about just give give give ’cause you don’t want to burn out. So really I think we don’t spend enough time in reflection. So one of my goals this year is to spend you know if I can an hour a day just in quiet reflecting on… you know, the inside of myself.
TAJCI
Absolutely. And all the experts, there so much written about it and the benefits of it not just from the spiritual teachers but from even business experts and coaches.
JANA
Well and I I did I tell you when we were in Columbia this summer for our Colombian daughter’s wedding, there’s this museum and attached to it is a parking garage and in the courtyard there was a patio of silence.
TAJCI
Courtyard of the museum?
JANA
Yes. And there was a patio of silence, and I thought about that and I thought, we need some of those in America, where we can sit down
TAJCI
OK. So you are saying it’s a public space
JANA
Yes. With a “Courtyard of Silence”. There was a sign: “Patio of Silence” in Spanish and I was like: Wow! People just can go there. And it was kind of enclosed and you can go and just sit but the expectations is no chit-chat. Just reflect and be silent. If we all did that what we would learn about ourselves!
TAJCI
I know I know. I always say how can we calm the noises and the voices and expectations ’cause everything comes with that experience, and perceptions, everything that we struggle with and that prevents us from really waking up to the life that were created for. You know often it seems that this waking up moment the stories that we read about people who shifted their lives their waking up moments were loud, were very, you know, true wake up calls maybe it was an illness or addiction or death in family loss of some dear and I had quite a few guests that you know experienced that. When it’s harder is when you know there’s a series of they are not even wake up calls, they are like whispers right? And if we can be aware of them and then make the shifts every day because you know life is not about this one shift and then everything is perfect, right?
JANA
Well it reminds me of the days when I would take Larry and our routine was to go to Mass at Saint Patricks residence every morning first. And Rosemarie would be in the quiet room they’d have her there because there’s a chapel attached to the nursing home and we would go to Mass every day. Well, sometimes those Masses were funerals. many times they were funerals. Mr. Larkin wanted to stay for them. he enjoyed, even if he didn’t know who had passed he enjoyed hearing what legacy they left.
And it was so beautiful for me to watch him listen to the eulogies and then I realized I was being impacted by: what are they saying about these people? Am I happy with what I’m doing in my life? Am I deserving of some of the things that are being said? And not that I’m you know concerned about what people say about me but I wanna be a real authentic person who leaves a beautiful legacy of connection or whatever it might be
TAJCI
Yeah I used to… I did a lot of singing at memorial services and funerals and you know I thought so many times nobody ever mentions you know the bank account or even the career accomplishments you know, they they go over those really fast ok, he was whatever, but it’s more about the time that they spent together, the cookies they baked and you know, the love and caring. Yea, it makes you re-evaluate your life. And perhaps when you, you know, look at someone that you don’t know you’re not so overwhelmed with your emotions
JANA
Correct
TAJCI
So you can it is, it serves as a time to reflect. One more thought, Mr. Larkin’s one of his favorite songs you shared with me was “If I Had My Life to Live Over”and the end when he passed, what do you think. What do you think?
JANA
Well, I think he lived an incredibly honorable life and we’re all very hard on ourselves so I think he would have been kind of hard on himself, but he lived a very honorable life, and I know that because my husband received so many beautiful letters after Larry passed from the sales managers from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals that Larry was in charge of. Larry retired over thirty years ago and we received so many beautiful notes saying how much Larry and Rosemarie meant to this couple or that couple so that really showed me and I always knew it, but it was a real testament to the life he and Rosemarie lived.
TAJCI
Would he have done anything differently?
JANA
I think we all would do things differently, but I think he would be very satisfied. He really devoted his life to his wife his faith, his eight children and his job.
TAJCI
So his life in a way, and the experience you have is a gift for you to have shifted and to have said okay if I, not if I had my life to live over but from this point on I have this opportunity, this chance to live my life not over, but from that moment on the way you are meant to live.
JANA
I’m much more present in my own life with my spouse, hopefully with my children I think just being the best person that I can be more giving. I still go back to Saint Patrick’s Bob and I were there yesterday. We spent two hours after Mass just visiting with the people there and it did us a world of good, we’re filled up again. So that’s how I’m living my life I’m going back to Saint Patrick’s. And whatever it is for you know, everybody’s being filled up differently I’m spending more time with my nieces and nephews spending time with your three boys was amazing for Bob and I. It was so nice! We put this, can I tell? We put this Christmas present together with the boys for you and Matthew and they loved doing that. I would like to spend more time my nieces and nephews doing things that matter.
TAJCI
Jana discovered parts of yourself that perhaps were not accessible to you.
JANA
I wasn’t aware of. I wasn’t aware of.
TAJCI
And so what a beautiful opportunity that we don’t realize we have when we are willing to spend time these older, wiser people who have so much to teach us and really to give us an opportunity to to slow down and discover. Well thank you so much for all the times we shared and for being a great friend.
JANA
Thank you!
TAJCI
I’m so happy for everything that you’ve done and how much you are giving, and what you are doing for you now. It’s Jana’s turn.
JANA
Thank you
TAJCI
As I review, my life with you
since the days of old
I wouldn’t think
of changing things
for all the world and it’s gold
If I had my life to live over
I’d do the same things again
I’d still want to roam
near the place we called home
where my happiness never would end.
I’d meet you when school days where over
walked through the lanes that we knew
If I had my life to live over
I’d still fall in love with you.
If I had my life to live over
I’d still fall in love with you.
TAJCI
Life is sometimes a string of waking up moments that that when we become aware of them maybe they happen every day, these opportunities to awaken to parts of us that we weren’t aware before in order to live the life that we were created for. So don’t be afraid and when things get really crazy and you absolutely think, oh I don’t have time, I can’t take time now to get into that quiet place and who has time for… I don’t have ten minutes to meditate or reflect or… that’s the time when you leave everything and take those ten minutes to quiet down and listen.
We’ll see you next time. Thank you for watching!
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