It’s now time to take charge with your mom’s future care by asking your family for help. This could be your most powerful tool, and it is virtually cost free!!! I call it a granny update.
The granny update is an email designed to update family members on mom’s condition. Start out by briefly describing your purpose in the granny update.
I first conceived the idea as a way to keep family members updated on my mom’s condition after her heart surgery. Too many of our family members were calling the hospital asking for information when the nurse said to us one day that she wanted us, as a family to pick a family spokesperson.
Imagine the hospital having lets say 1000 patients. (They have more than that but just for the sake of this example, we’ll pick 1000). If they had to speak to more than one family member per day to update them on the patient, they would spend all their time communicating instead of caring for. So, I became the spokesperson with my brother Jim as the back up. Now back to my idea if family communication.
I decided on email since it was quick and convenient.
My purpose was to keep the family informed with mom’s progress healing and recovering from her heart surgery.
But it cannot all be serious. It had to have some character. So I decided to take it to the next level. I gave it some human element and stories. So the next step when designing your email update is to include a story or two about something mom did or said.
Mom would often times ask me where something was that she could not find. Sometimes she would ask me what I did with it. My first response was to get angry at her accusation but did a left turn with that thought when Nancy reminded me that she was not herself and I should try to understand.
Close the granny update with a request for action but do this non-offensively by asking the family for advise. On one occasion I asked if anyone knew a good cleaning service. One of Moms grandkids came forward and stopped by the next Sunday and cleaned her housetop to bottom.
There will be a lot of Doctors appointments so you might want to ask for help with taking mom to the doctor. This can be done non-offensively by just throwing the request out to the family. “Anyone available to take Mom to the heart doctor next Wednesday at nine AM?
The soft approach worked well for me but may not work so well for you. You might have to be firmer with your request but keep this in mind. You won’t get anywhere forcing a family member into helping if they don’t want to.
But why would they NOT want to help? Maybe they don’t have the patience. Maybe they can’t handle the thought of getting old and their own mortality.
Lastly, make the data list as large as possible for you granny update. Include all children, grandchildren, cousins, aunts and uncles. That way, the odds of achieving your number one goal of getting help are increased.
