It’s the people we love who see us through
FOR MANY people, this New Year also marks the return to a more familiar way of life after Covid turned all our lives upside down. The past year has been a time of reflection on life’s real worth and meaning and over and over again we hear that the source of this worth and meaning is the people we love and who love us. It was speaking to the people we loved that saw us through. Even if they were on the other side of the world, their face on a screen could light up our day.
This Rosh Hashanah, it feels like the world is opening up again. We can see friends and family, drink coffee and eat together, celebrate birthdays and the New Year with those we love. Of course we’re still taking precautions. Meeting in outdoor spaces has become a favourite pastime.
Our service, PillarCare, provides care for people in the community and many of those people find themselves alone. Some cannot get out of their homes, due to mobility issues or illness. Some service users who live with dementia have been frightened and confused by the messages to stay home and are reluctant to come out again. As we prepare to celebrate the New Year, what about those people who cannot engage with the world outside their front door?
We take pride in ensuring that those whose lives could be marked by loneliness are encouraged and facilitated to enjoy the New Year too. Our wonderful care team help each service user to celebrate in a meaningful way. For some, this means taking time to prepare the right foods, and for those who may not remember it is New Year, organising calls to loved ones who live far away, looking at photos from New Years past, making and sending cards, listening to memories to bring them alive again.
Every year marks a fresh opportunity to celebrate and be grateful for the people we love and the people who love us. Some of PillarCare’s service users are 100 years old or more and remembering the people who have made their lives special is a precious practice at this time. They might like to look at a photo of their loved one and talk to the carer about them, or play a favourite piece of music.
One of our 104-year-old service users told me: “I feel lucky every day. I have a wonderful family. I have a wonderful life.” As the years pass, each New Year can feel more like a gift, more time to
Each New Year feels more like a gift, more time to be with those we love’
be with those we love. Another service user in her late eighties with dementia, whose daughter lives abroad, is overjoyed by the flowers her daughter sends her every week and each time they arrive her carer talks to her about her daughter and makes her memories new again.
There are many wonderful community based inclusivity projects, so it’s worth looking into what’s available near you. Some synagogues make special arrangements to help people living with dementia engage with their services. Whether celebrating indoors or outside, with friends, family, carers or a mixture, in person or on screen, from all of us at PillarCare, Shanah Tovah! May this new year bring happy times with the people who mean most to you and those who care for you through the years.
Oona Corke is the registered manager of PillarCare, an award winning home-care service based in North London