Susan Phillips is an independent care provider in Grays Harbor. She is sixty-six. It is late Tuesday afternoon – the end of a bright sunny January day. A petite woman, she is sitting on her back deck, one mile out East Hoquiam road, watching the geese land on the Hoquiam River, trying to catch her breath. As she breaths in and out, in and out, she moans, “Oh, give me some air!”
Susan retired November 2011,and had been a care provider since 1966. “ My mom (Peggy Valliere) and I worked in the first senior center.” Today the senior center is part of Coastal Community Action Programs and is located in the old Armory building on Third Street in Aberdeen. The office employs more than 100 care givers who work in the homes of seniors in the area. Susan had mixed emotions when she left the center. She was a new mother. Back then she thought caring for seniors was a job. Now she says there was a need, there will always be a need. She has always related well with older people, always believed she made a difference in their lives because they did in hers.
I have more trouble breathing now. Some days are worse than others and I have to use my inhaler and try to relax, so I can control my chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is a progressive disease that makes it hard to breathe. Progressive means the disease gets worse over time. I believe second-hand smoke has taken a toll on my lungs, plus I smoked for ten years when I was a younger woman. A few years ago, my doctor placed me on steroids. I still have trouble breathing, but not like I did before I got the medicine.
My last job was at Personal Service Providers in Hoquiam. I had to drive from my home in Hoquiam to Aberdeen and then to Montesano. This made for a long day. Thankfully, it was not hard to do my work. I had some of the best clients and the most rewarding experiences.
I had one client I will never forget. Ed was his name and he was 55, in the last stages of cancer. He was about to die. All I was supposed to do was to sit next to him while his wife took care of business in town. I was giving her a break from watching her loved one lay motionless and silent.
On the second visit I noticed a crib board and asked Ed if he could play. He was so weak, but he sat up and we played two hands and he fell asleep. Wow, what a day for me! He sat up and we had a good game. As my visits continued, the games got longer and then we were actually keeping score. Then one Monday, he was sitting up, cards in hand, waiting for me. We had a good game that day. On Wednesday I arrived all happy and ready to play cards with my new best friend, but he had passed away Tuesday and no one told me. I was so saddened he was gone that I actually cried right then and there.
Years ago, I made a vow to my mother to always care for those in need in my community. One year after we moved to North Hoquiam, mother began to notice the affects the economy was having on the families in her neighborhood, and wanted to do something to help. She was low income herself and could not make ends meet on her husband’s social security. She was so determined and persistent that she got a job with DSHS. This job was doing surveys in her neighborhood.
Mother interviewed every last person in their homes and did so on foot. She fought to bring attention to those in need and was joined by persons like Dorothy and Dwayne Watkins, Paul Yomans, Joan Beniot (Bransfield), Barb Huffman and Bunny Roberts. These are the people who were the grassroots, who together brought about the first senior center on Market Street in Aberdeen.
As I grew into womanhood, I joined my mother in her fight to help all seniors in our community. We fought to change how these seniors were viewed and taken care of. I worked for the first senior center cooking for the hot lunch program. Mom would gather food from anyone willing to donate. Just before the first Thanksgiving, the center celebrated, and someone gave her a big bag of fresh cranberries. Neither one of us had ever cooked cranberries.
Thinking it could not be that difficult we added sugar and water and cooked them. They cooked down but would not thicken, so we added some corn starch and then more and more and still the cranberries were not thickening. (Laughing) But when it cooled, you would have needed a chain saw to cut it. Let me tell you, a bunch of old ladies laughed till they cried that day.
We served 35 seniors Thanksgiving lunch and no one complained. The center was about getting people involved in life again. The ladies were happy to be doing the things that had made their life important, kitchen stuff and the men were grateful for a home cooked meal and a bunch of old ladies to boss them around.
It used to be that the old were placed in nursing homes. That’s just the way it was. What you did with the old, you hid them from view. The only time they were seen if at all, was on their birthdays or holidays. This was changed by the senior center. Nowadays, the elderly stay in their own homes. Families provide and share the care for the older member or they hire someone to perform the care.
The providers are young women mostly, trying to make a paycheck. It was different when I started care giving. We knew how to clean and cook and we cared. The young women today all seem to want more money and are downright disrespectful and lazy. I believe they just need to be shown how to do these things – no one has shown them. If I was to run an agency for care providers, I believe I would have on the job training program to show providers how to care for our seniors in their homes.
Some seniors only get out of their homes once or twice a month. They are the housebound, the ones I would spend five to six hours every day with. I would go back to check on them before I went home to take care of my family. I just had to be sure they were okay. Many a time I would be told to “stop worrying and to get on home” (chuckles). Those were happy days and times.
My clients and I always got along. Actually, we really liked each other. Everything I did, I did for them. Even on my days off, I would go and check on them. After all, I am a care provider (big laugh). On one of my days off, I slept in and all four of my clients called me to see if I was alright. You see, they need me and I need them. They may be old, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care or matter.
In days past, I was able to care for my clients and my family. Do not get me wrong – it was not all peaches and cream. Like when I left the first senior center – I was so sad to be leaving, but I had secured work and a house. The sadness was leaving the other women and my mother. I felt like a part of their lives and they mine. Yet I needed to make a wage to care for my daughter and myself. I loaded my old rusty 1964 Ford station wagon with all our worldly goods and moved to Long Beach, Washington. The job was not ready and the house was a worn out trailer sitting in a run down trailer park.
I, like my mother, noticed the needy in my community and found people to help, to care for and earn a living to care for my daughter and myself. At one of the community gatherings, I was wandering around introducing myself. I joined a group of women discussing the lack of workers to take care of the seniors in the Long Beach area.
Seniors and seniors in need of care are my biggest weakness. I am all ears when I hear anything about them. I cannot help it – I have to see what the problem is. I have to see if I can help in any way. I have always cared for seniors. I took care of three or four a week. I believe the men were easier to care for than the women. At times, the women were much more demanding than the men. They were more delicate, needy. The men just wanted to flirt mostly.
A major concern today is services to care for the elderly. I believe there will always be a need, a necessity to do so. Those who believe they want and can be a care giver need to know:
That care giving is not for the inexperienced or people who are not touchy-feely. Your feelings will get hurt and you will experience ups and downs. But if you truly do feel a passion for caring for others, there is no more rewarding job than that of a care provider.
My life has changed. I have slipped into the category of senior citizen. I rue the day I must give up my wood stove because I will be unable to take care of the labor involved in firewood. Today there are too many broken families. This means there won’t always be a family member around to help. We in the community need to teach our young to look after their elders, to make sure they are living a safe and happy life.
I loved working. Now I worry about how to pay for my medicine. I worry about working too many hours and having a deduction in my social security or have to pay more taxes at the end of the year.
~Interviewed & transcribed
by Denise M. Carpenter
