Alone as an aging Senior

We have been working with a fabulous individual. She is active, intelligent and too busy working to deal with her move. Although technically, she is a senior sometimes I feel like she is our contemporary. But I truly worry about what will happen when she ages. Who will be there to take care of her since she has no children and was an only child herself. We all know how quickly things can change if one gets sick.

I saw this article in the New York Times Blog and thought it was very  important to share this with you

http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/aging-without-children/

G-d bless my child, she has a lot of soon to be Seniors counting on her. As it says in the article, she is our insurance policy. Love Ya Rachel!

Check out our video!!

We had such a busy summer. I was determined to learn about social networking and more importantly to start using it. Ok, truth be told I am a little afraid of the process but I am getting less scared every day. Sarah S., my Summer Intern will be very proud of me when she reads this. Today, I put up our first video on the Transition Guardians web site. Truth be told, when making this video that I hope you will watch,I had some great help from Rachel and Sarah. Rachel created the original video and selected the music and Sarah did the editing. Thank you Rachel and Sarah. This would not have been possible without you. And of course I am always grateful to our wonderful team of Guardians.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. When we speak to potential clients and explain what our services entail they are usually not quite sure of how our services can ease the transition in their move. We decided to put a short video together to show our clients what we physically do for them. You, our client makes all of the decisions and we put your wishes in motion.Please remember that each move is unique and require personalized plans and services.

Enjoy this video! Please share it with all of your friends and colleagues

The Senility Prayer

A few months ago we had the pleasure of working with a real dynamo.  My client (let’s call her Mrs. K) decided it was time to leave her uptown apartment to move into a chic downtown assisted living community in Battery Park City. She is a beautiful, spunky, cosmopolitan woman in her late nineties. Some might even call her “sex in the city” kind of gal. It was unbelievable how well her mind functioned despite her age, that was until the trauma of her move set in. Suddenly her orientation of what was going on disappeared. Sometimes she would forget what things she had decided to bring with her, and what to donate. She even forgot one day that we had met with her daughter. It was truly out of character for her. I found it so sad that the daunting task of moving had brought on signs of dementia to one of my favorite clients. It got me thinking what is dementia and how do we detect it?

By chance this week I was invited to hear a presentation on Many Faces of Dementia: Alzheimer’s and Dementia, a Changing Lifestyle
given by Benjamin Pearce, President and CEO of Potomac Homes. It was very informative and he even supplied us with a website  www.Planetbenja.com to look up all of the presentation slides.

At the end of the lecture he read the following poem out loud.

THE SENILITY PRAYER

Grant me the senility to forget

the people I never liked

anyway, the good fortune to

run into the ones I do, and the

eyesight to tell the difference.

Honestly, I laughed out loud. Doesn’t this work for us all !?

Books, Books and More Books!

This past week we had the privilege to pack an esteemed rabbi and his wife’s personal library. The rabbi passed away a short time ago, and we were asked to divide between donation, sending books off to a bookseller, and for the family to keep. Just by walking into the room we knew we had an intellectual on our hands, someone who had loved to learn, and read.

This task was a daunting one being that he owned hundreds of books, but at the same time it was so interesting. The library had been built up for the past 50 years. All the books had been separated into sections such as philosophy, psychology, art, history, and classic literature. We found numerous copies of books we had to read in college and high school such as Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies. He had in his collection every book Sigmund Freud had ever written, every biography written about him, and books testing his theories. In addition he had an ample amount of art books, that were donated to a local high school. 

In the end we packed almost 70 boxes of books alone, which included 3 different encyclopedias, with soft and hard cover books alike. When we were done it was a great feeling, we had been able to really learn more about owner of this impressive library. We can only imagine how brilliant and cultured this couple must have been.

A little bit about me, Lorri Ashe!

Now that our blog is up and running, I thought it would be a good time to introduce Transition Guardians, and how we got started.

Through out our lives as our relationships change as do our needs and the needs of those around us. As a mother, wife,  daughter, sister, and granddaughter, watching the aging of my grandmother and the changes that took place, discussions began to surface in the family. At the same time I was working for a company that owns a network of senior communities. I became very interested in how to take part in this new field. One day I read an article about Relocation and Transition Management. Suddenly everything just clicked and I knew I would be great at this. I researched the profession, took the CRTS – certified relocation and transition specialist course - and joined NASMM. It was thrilling!  Within the first month after setting up shop, I had my first client who was an absolute pleasure. Soon enough I was so busy helping more clients, many of whom I still keep in touch with them to this day. I love what I do and I hope my clients feel it. I hope I have the opportunity to meet you, so you can experience for your self the care and assistance you get from all of us at Transition Guardians.

Lorri Ashe creator of Transition Guardians

Hello World!! We Made It!!!

Hello World!

Transition Guardians has finally made it!   The blogging fun has begun!

What took us so long to start this blog was finding a focus. We needed to think about what we wanted to say to you. We needed to find a focal point that would stir emotions, and those emotions will vary with this blog. With in this blog, we the team that makes up Transition Guardians, are going to give you insight into the world of relocation and downsizing. This blog is shared by the whole team. We will each contribute a personal feeling, an experience that we have had on the project, a shared moment with a client  , or an interesting treasure that we may find along the way.Yes, there may be times when we go a little off course, if we find something we just have to share.

We share this blog with you out there. We hope you enjoy it, participate in it and share it with others.

Here goes our TRANSITION!

Lorri and the whole team of

Transition Guardians LLC