The decline of a parent is not just a physical and financial challenge, it's a spiritual one as well.

Kathy Bingham knew she had reached midlife when she stopped using her sick leave for her children and started using it to care for her mom. Her 83-year-old mother lives on a farm in a rural area about 80 miles from Houston. She still tends to her garden every day and loves to drive her riding mower. She bought a new one last year.

It's not her mother driving the lawn mower that worries Bingham as much as her mother still driving a car.

"That will probably be the next thing we address," she says. Since losing her husband six years ago, Bingham's mother has found a new doctor within 15 miles of her farm. She used to drive 40 miles. Bingham's brother owns the family farm now and helps manage the affairs of his mother and her aging sister, who lives in the same community.

Bingham's family issues, including the looming possibility of having to take her mother's car keys, are what fuels her passion for caregivers. As the director of the Office of Aging for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Bingham spends her days fielding calls and e-mails from children of aging parents. For almost 30 years her office has been helping parishes establish senior ministry programs. She's been successful in three quarters of the diocese's parishes, offering resources, support, training, conferences, and days of prayer.

"We know that if people socialize regularly they tend to have better coping skills and fewer health problems, and they are more compliant with doctors' orders," Bingham says.

If seniors attend regular events, people ask about them and miss them when they aren't there.

Bingham's concern for the elderly has moved her office beyond ministry and into advocacy for older adults. She has organized Senior Senates to help parishes and seniors stay connected, and she speaks up to community and local government agencies on behalf of senior citizens. Bingham spent a good part of this past spring helping seniors navigate a website about the new Medicare drug programs.

"How you treat the most frail is an indicator of how society is going," said Bingham. "These are people who contribute significant amounts of time to their parishes and their parish communities."


The elderly in the living room
Families usually wait way too long to make decisions about their aging parents, says Ethel Sharp of Aging Matters, a St. Petersburg, Florida nonprofit corporation that helps seniors stay independent as long as possible and offers caregivers support and advice on when older adults should consider assisted living.

"The biggest thing I try to do is ward off crisis," says Sharp. "When people are in such a panic, they call all the wrong shots. They think everyone needs to go in a nursing home now, and they don't know their options."

As a teenager in New Rochelle, New York, Sharp watched her mother die of brain cancer. In the days before hospice care, her parents' bedroom was turned into a hospital ward, and the family nursed her mother to the end.

"It was spectacular," says Sharp, describing her mother's grace-filled death and the support of her family. She remembers the prayer vigils at her mother's bedside and the peace that prevailed throughout her illness.

A contributor to the senior section of the St. Petersburg Times, Sharp has worked in aging issues for decades, including for her diocese in Florida. She draws on volumes of experience in her own life. In addition to watching her mother die, she also cared for her mother-in-law until her death.

While her children were still in grade school, Sharp's mother-in-law suffered a paralyzing stroke in New Jersey. Family members up north decided to put her in a nursing home, but Sharp, recalling the peaceful decline of her own mother, insisted she move in with her family instead.

"That's when I really began to understand the nitty grittys and the emotions of caregiving," says Sharp. "My mother-in-law came here resentful that she was even alive with that condition. The more I did, the more she demanded."

Sharp says she never felt so alone. Her friends didn't understand what she was going through. They weren't having to bathe their mothers-in-law or take them to the toilet.

"We talk openly about our babies and our kids. We share birthing stories. But we rarely discuss our aging parents. It's still a disgrace that your perfect mother or father is now unable to speak right or walk right," said Sharp. "In our minds, our parents were the ones with all the answers. The child within us still calls out to mom and dad. It's dreadful to realize that these people who represent our security and togetherness are now incapable."

Sharp, who has counseled thousands of aging adults and their caregivers, believes that's the reason so many children distance themselves from aging parents or let another sibling handle the responsibilities. In many cases she is the one who ends up caring for the seniors referred to her agency.