Discovering unexpected models for living in a nursing home
You may wonder how a post about caring for the elderly could help your golf. You'd be surprised.
I’ve shared my writing freely since I migrated my blogs to Substack in January 2023, and I've enjoyed the positive feedback and connection with many readers.
However, crafting quality—and I hope meaningful and entertaining—writing takes a lot of time. Writing is also key part of how I make a living.
I have decided it’s time that I begin charging for providing this service. As a lifelong writer, I believe that my time, skill and experience is valuable. I hope you do too.
I will continue to share free posts, but I will be placing others behind a paywall. I hope that you’ll consider supporting me by becoming a paid subscriber.
If you prefer to remain an unpaid subscriber, I remain grateful for your support and interest in my writing.
When I visit my mother, I never know what I’m going to find. Or not find.
My mother, Margaret, is 93, and lives in the Hilltop Manor long-term care home in Cambridge about 45 minutes from my home in Guelph.
Mom has Alzheimer’s. Occasionally, she’ll point a shaky finger at me and blurt “Tim!” Most of the time she has no idea. Eventually, she usually says I’m one of her six brothers. I’m honoured. They were good guys.
Everyone on her floor has a form of dementia. All the residents need constant monitoring and care and often changing. As I walk through the hall, a few folks smile back, but the majority just stare, looking confused or slightly distressed. Or asleep.
Most of the caregivers are PSWs (personal support workers), along with a few nurses and specialists. They blow me away. Every visit, I’m surprised by some feat of kindness.
In the two years that Mom has lived there, I also found something I didn’t expect: these caregivers are models for living. For bringing out the best in everyone in all that we do, even golf for Pete’s sake.
Like the home residents, PSWs are not valued in our society, which recognizes people for their achievements, status and rewards them mainly for how they help move money around, but they fill me with a sense of awe and gratitude.
Other than needing a wheelchair to get around, my mother is physically healthy. She pads noiselessly along the hallways in her chair, her black slippers shuffling like little duck feet.
On a recent visit, she wasn’t in her room or one of her usual spots. I alerted a nurse, a woman with amazing long black curls. She smiled and immediately began searching other resident’s rooms.
After about 10 minutes, the nurse walked toward me with a puzzled look and her palms facing skyward. Initially, I found it kind of funny that we couldn’t find Mom. She was living up to her nursing home nickname: The Happy Wanderer.
Despite the nurse’s upbeat promise that “we’ll find her,” I started to feel a low-grade panic. The nurse reassured me, yes, all the doors are locked. She enlisted a male PSW and the search began again.
About five minutes later, the nurse wheeled Mom down the hall. She was found in another resident’s room. In her wheelchair in the bathroom—asleep. The nurse and I laughed.
Funny and sad things happen there. I often cringe when I overhear another resident yelling in confused anger, someone crying or some pour soul asking the same question over and over.
Upon my arrival on another visit, a young female PSW informed me that Mom was in another resident’s room—also named Margaret—again asleep, but this time in the bed under the covers.
She roused my mother, but didn’t have the strength to get her up. With help from a male PSW, they cheerfully got my mother out of bed and into her wheelchair.
PSWs do the heavy lifting, literally and figurately. It’s tough work, cleaning bottoms, brushing teeth, feeding some residents spoon by spoon, fitting people into their clothes. They’re caring for people who are often unresponsive and occasionally hostile.
PSWs are forever having to solve conundrums such as breaking up wheelchair traffic jams, persuading a wobbly resident she’d be safer sitting down, convincing someone they’re in the wrong room, or they need to be changed.
There’s a female resident who compulsively walks the entire floor all hours of the day, every day. A PSW always walks with her, holding her left forearm. The PSWs take turns.
Amazingly, I have never once seen a nurse or PSW show impatience or act crossly at Hilltop Manor. Even when a resident has slapped her.
I’m wowed by their compassion, professionalism, and sustained cheerfulness.
Our modern world views these feeble folks as burdens, no use to society, and warehouses them where they won’t be a bother, but to the nurses and PSWs, these are the most important people in the world.
Watching these workers makes me think of my own self-absorption. How would I respond if a resident yelled obscenities in my face?
For most of my life, I’ve tried to be a good partner, father, and community member, but I’m chronically thinking about my favourite subject—me.
As a golfer, I spent a lot of my life obsessing over my game, seeking information to fix my faults, scheming to find more time to practice, and hoping that whatever thing I’m working on will work.
The game takes a long time, and even more so if you’re a golf nerd striving to improve. Golfers admit you have to be a little “selfish” to play this game well.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s not immoral, a sign of outrageous narcissism, or of questionable ethics. It’s the way we’re wired—we live in our private world driven by our needs and desires, but we also live in a big world of obligations that, ideally, we engage in willingly and responsibly.
The challenge is finding and maintaining a balance, especially in a secular and consumerist society that says you’ll be happy and considered successful only if you achieve certain results.
Golf nerds are obsessed by results and most don’t appear happy. When you ask avid golfers about their games, they’ll usually tell you what they’re working on to fix their problems. Hardcore golfers tend to be Grade A complainers. Occasionally, I’ll hear someone say they had an amazing time with their buddies on a beautiful day on a lovely course, but just occasionally.
I believe that we golf nerds cause our suffering through our chronic self-absorption.
We’re like the interrogator who shines an unrelenting spotlight in our eyes while bellowing, “Why aren’t you killing it? What’s wrong with you?”
In seeking to solve the mystery, we search the same psychic rooms over and over hoping to find something different, but we always come up with the same tawdry list of inadequacies and excuses.
Counter-intuitively, looking outside of ourselves provides the clues to what we’re seeking within.
In Mom’s nursing home, the nurses and PSWs always appear fully focused on whoever they are attending to. They are invested in the other. They look completely absorbed by this person’s every twitch, eye movement and gesture, and completely surrender their own needs and thoughts for this person whose face might be frozen in a perpetual frown. For this valued and loved person.
I’ve never asked a PSW about what he or she thinks about while they are taking care of a resident. I should.
My remote connection to their experience comes from memories when I felt compelled to help someone in dire straits. Invariably, I came away feeling contented, bigger but lighter. As a coach, I can’t compare what I do for a second to a PSW, but I think the feeling of connection is a big part.
For all their abundant giving, I believe the caregivers find meaning in return. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes a scene in a Nazi concentration camp in which he shared a few peas from his bowl of brine with a man who appeared near death. Frankl felt joy.
When I leave Mom’s nursing home, I’m nearly always in an altered state, sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for hours. I often feel sad but also expanded and somewhat detached from my usual concerns.
Whether its playing golf, coaching golf, writing, doing business or in my relationships, I believe I have a smidge more clarity of what’s important.
I also sense capabilities within me that I was previously blind to.
Hitting a golf ball is a lighter experience. Interestingly, the less invested I am in the outcome, the better the outcomes.
By being focused on the other—on the without—there’s greater connection to the abundance that is unexplored and unknown within.
I believe that the PSWs and nurses in my mom’s nursing home are wonderful models for how being other centred and of service enriches our own lives.
I also believe they’ve made a discovery—that the people who live there are not burdens.
They are gifts.
My summer schedule is filling up with workshops and talks based on my latest book, Getting Unstuck: 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, and my book The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story.
If you’re interested in having a workshop or a speaker at your club or event, send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.
I invite you to check out my new coaching page on my website that discusses my approach and includes lovely thoughts from my students.
If you’ve ever considered mental game coaching, I’m inviting you to take the opportunity for a FREE 30-minute coaching call.
During this free session, we’ll discuss:
· What’s happening in your game?
· What are your objectives?
· What specifically makes you feel stuck?
· Identify actions and a plan that you help you get unstuck.
This FREE session will show you how to finally start moving forward.
To register for your free session, send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.
Don’t miss your opportunity to get unstuck and develop your feeling of greatness!
Sim Weekly
Dive into the world of indoor golf with Sim Weekly. From setting up your perfect home sim and getting expert installation tips, to in-depth product reviews and practical advice for honing your skills at home, we’ve got you covered. Plus, enjoy fun content, exclusive giveaways, and more. Join 1k+ golfers elevating their indoor game.
Hey Tim, I really loved this one. I think one your best. Cheers!