"Why is Grandma Naked?" Author Ellen Rittberg

Hey, this is Larry the Cable Guy. You are listening to Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberg and if you're not listening to it, you're a communist. Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the show for you as a family caregiver. How you doing? How you holding up?

What's going on with you? A million Americans right now serve as a family caregiver. If you're one of them, you understand the journey and we're glad to have you as part of this show to talk about ways to strengthen the family caregiver. Now, maybe you're taking care of an aging loved one. Maybe you're taking care of a special needs child. Maybe you have a family member dealing with some type of trauma, mental illness, addiction, alcoholism, whatever the impairment. There's always a caregiver. Many challenges, dangers, heartache, many dangers, toils and snares. How do you help those who help those? And that's what the show is all about.

I'm bringing you 35 years of experience to help you stay strong and healthy as you take care of someone who is not. And with me always is himself from Nashville. He is the Baron of the Board, the Sultan of Sound, the Earl of Engineering. He's John Butler and you love him. Oh, thank you. Oh, yes. Wonderful. Hello.

I did not realize I had theme music today, but... Well, listen, John. I'm fine. I'm warming up. It was 18 below last night and I chipped my tooth on soup. How cold was it? I chipped my tooth on soup. Oh, that's fantastic. It's so cold.

Politicians are keeping their hands in their own pockets. I mean, it is cold out there. We went to Billings this week.

I'm out in Montana and went to Billings to see a specialist with Gracie and also get her prosthetic legs worked on. And we spent the night over there and I was out walking the dog at night and I had to take a hammer and chisel him off the fire hydrant. I mean, it's cold. We got drums. We got a rim shot on that end. I got crickets, you know. We got crickets. Well, John, how are you feeling?

Oh, I am fantastic. But I had a, you know, a buddy of mine got a little sick and couldn't work for a little while. So he had problems with his water bill, right? So I sent him a Get Well Soon card.

Get a Well Soon. Okay, good. I was tracking with it. I knew it was going somewhere.

I'm sad I followed it. Yeah, me too. You know, that makes two of us.

No, I'm doing pretty, doing pretty well. It's, you know, still doing distance learning with the kids, but that just means I get to, you know, I get to hang out with my kids all day. That is great.

It is pretty nice. Well, I, you know how we love, we love humor on the show. Humor is a very serious business around here. We aspire to it.

We haven't quite attained it, but we do aspire to it. Well, I had a lady that I've connected with this week and the title of her book prompted me to call her. Okay.

It was just that simple. And her name is Ellen Ritberg. She's an attorney, but she's also a writer and author and a caregiver. And her book is called Why is Grandma Naked?

Caring for your aging parent. And I thought you were right. Yeah. And I, you know, and so I just love that. So Ellen is with us right now. Ellen, how are you feeling?

Oh, I'm feeling great. Thank you for having me. We are thrilled to have you. And this is John Butler with us.

John and I have done the show together for now, gosh, eight years this year, and he's helped produce it and joins me with it. And so it's just a pleasure to have you here. And tell us a little bit about your background before we get into this book and just what brings you to this point. And then we'll get into the book, which I think is the best. You win the award today for the best title of book.

I just I just love that. Why is Grandma Naked? Caring for your aging parent.

And this will be out next month. But tell us a little bit about your journey and your life first. I sure will. So my mom was in her late 80s, living in her house by herself. And I was staying there. Actually, I moved in temporarily after she broke her hip. And when she came out of the rehabilitation center, I just started noticing some things about mom that just weren't quite right. And I was all set to move out before before I realized that I was all set to move out, you know, go to my next place where I was going to live.

I had sold my own home and I realized I couldn't I couldn't leave mom. And so I ended up staying there for six years. And I write numerous essays. I have a previous book called Thirty Five Things Your Teen Won't Tell You.

So I will actually publish by from where you're from, Nashville, Tennessee, Turner Turner Publishing. And I at the time at the time, I didn't always see humor in the situations that I was in. Lots of stress. Mom declined, ended up I was there for six years. She ended up dying, dying in her home, which is what I had hoped I could attain for her. At the time, I also was a full time attorney representing senior citizens. But what I realized, Peter, was that everything I knew, my work experience was absolutely no help to me in dealing with my own mother.

I was in the expression virgin territory. Just so many things just came upon me and comes upon caregivers. What is stress? Stress is the unexpected. And I like to say if we have no stress, we're probably dead because stress is just a part of life.

But as a caregiver, the level of stress when you're dealing with something new and unfamiliar to you, as a caregiver to somebody who's suddenly altered in personality and physical form, you have to make all kinds of adjustments. And so I did. And I just started to see the humor in it after the fact. And I said, I've got to share this with people. People are so, so stressed out. And it takes a lot. I don't have to tell you you've done it for 35 years. And I regard the time I was with my mom as a blessing and it was life transforming. And I want to share with the readers what worked for me and what didn't work for me.

And it is coming out March. Did you have a pretty good sense of humor before all this? Well, you know, it's funny.

I you'd have to ask other people. I know how to write fun. And as a journalist, my first career was a journalist and beginner's luck. I wrote an essay and it ended up my first essay ended up in The New York Times.

And through the years, that made me feel like I should maybe I should keep doing this. Reader's Digest asked me to write a piece. Actually, I started to be regarded as a parenting expert and I was quoted a lot. And I got I was contacted by Reader's Digest and they said, can you write something about some tips of grandparents?

So I'm in Reader's Digest and HuffPost and, you know, on TV shows. And it was all really exciting. But it was a humorous book. And I just saw that there were so many things that I could share that after the fact, I see the humor in them.

Sometimes I saw it at the time, but not usually because it was too stressed out. And so I detailed them. Yeah, I detailed them from A to Z. There's actually I actually have a 40 small 40 short chapters because sometimes it was something that began with the letter C, for example. And I had more than one entry.

So I see one C to E3. And I say in my book, look, in New York City, they have a street called Six and a Half Street. So if New York City has a six and a half street, I can have more than one letter of the alphabet in my in my chapters.

Well, I think that's a fine rule. By the way, you're from I learned this today, John. She's from Long Island. But but there's a better way to pronounce Long Island than what I'm used to.

I'm used to say it Long Island. But that's not how you pronounce it. Did you know that?

I did not know that. Tell us. Tell us how you pronounce it.

OK. It's the only way I know how to say it, which is I'm from Long Island. Long Island. Long Island like G-U-Y. Yeah. Long Island.

Long Island. Well, now, when you set out to write this book, your mom has passed away. And how long did you how long did you take between that and starting this book? It was like a year and a half, two years.

I had to wait that long. I started to, you know, write it down, jot down things I remember. And then it all started flowing back to me. And I said, yeah, I've got this. And then working on it. And, you know, anybody that writes knows you write a draft. You redo it. You know, it's ready.

It's ready for the universe. But did you did you was it was it was it painful for you or was it cathartic or all the above? You know, I think that's a wonderful question, because, yes, it was cathartic. I wrote I write poetry. So I did write some poems about mom and the tears were flowing down my face, you know, as I wrote them. And I wrote a eulogy for my mom. But, you know, but there was so many funny things that had happened, in part because of the type of person that she was and how she changed.

Which, if you want, I can tell you a couple of things. But I think they pertain to my mom. But OK, my mom was a very, very quiet person and very I would say it would say dignified. She she didn't have it. Maybe she didn't have much of a sense of humor. She didn't laugh easily, shall we say. And she didn't smile easily. Well, as she declined, she suddenly developed this sense of humor for, for example, the progressive insurance lady on TV.

She loved the progressive law. Call me in. She would call me in. I would be at the other end of the house and come see her.

And it's this lady, if you're not familiar, she was all white and she has a red headband. And I can tell you what she looks like in my sleep because mom called me over many a time to tell me about the insurance, the progressive insurance lady. And my mom had this whole scenario. She said to me, oh, look, she's pregnant. And see how they're trying to hide it.

You know, you know, the producer must be trying to hide it. And my son told me my mother had this thing called the Trivago guy. And she had this story about the Trivago guy that he used to be a little messy and his producer fixed him up. And I don't know where my mom would get these stories. And she was convinced of the truth of them. And at the beginning, I would almost like try to convince her she was wrong because I didn't realize they were just made up from cloth.

But it's really funny, you know, this kind of person who's quite serious. That brings me to a point when you said you tried to convince her she was wrong and then you realized, wait a minute, I don't need to convince her she's wrong. Talk a little bit about that. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Another thing about my mom was mom didn't have my cheerful disposition. She always, you know, thought that people, you know, you know, she would she might think, why did the receptionist in the in the physical therapist office not, you know, she doesn't like me.

She didn't smile at me. I said to mom, you know, if you smiled, she smiled back, you know, that kind of thing. But I think that she would she would take an incident that happened sometimes 40 years ago.

And she would just sort of bring it into the future. One day, Mom, when she was still driving, but she had already started to decline, came home from going to the supermarket. And she said to me, you're not going to believe what happened. I saw Mrs. G and Mrs. G was somebody that we is that mom had been in a religious school carpool with around 40 years before. Mrs. G was in the car next to me, sitting with her daughter. And she looked over to me and said, she looks really old. I said, Mom, Mrs. G only went one of two places.

She's gone to a better place, meaning she died or she went to Florida, which is where a lot of older people go. I went further. I actually brought mom over to the computer.

I said, let's look it up. Let's Google Mrs. G's name. And sure enough, there was Mrs. G's name and she was alive and she was living in Florida. And, you know, and it was winter time. So if Mrs. G wasn't up here for the winter, it didn't happen.

But my mother was convinced that she and I lay out in my book in very humorous detail. It might have been one of three things. It may have been somebody that said somebody looked old, but it wasn't Mrs. G and her daughter.

It was just some stranger. It may have been Mrs. G, which I know it could have been Mrs. G. But I actually try to convince my mom that that couldn't have happened, Mom. And you look great because people keep stopping you on the street to tell you how beautiful you are, which means either I look older than my age or you're just very beautiful.

I didn't tell her I look older than my age. My mother was a beautiful older woman. So that was that's one story that's in my book. Oh, yeah. Well, good stuff.

Yeah. And those are those are wonderful stories. And it's it it's interesting to listen to how you change from starting to that you had to adapt to this changing personality of hers that seemed to be changing fairly rapidly.

And it was and I'm sure you will unpack that more in the book. We're talking here with Ellen Ritberg. She's the author of Why Is Grandma Naked? Caring for Your Aging Parent.

I just love the title of this book. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is hope for the caregiver. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. We got to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Don't go anywhere. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. That's part of our journey here today. We'll be right back.

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But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish standing with hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standing with hope dot com to learn more and participate in lifting others up.

That's standing with hope dot com. I'm Gracie and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberg. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. There's nothing quite like what we do out there, reaching into the heartache and the isolation and the challenges of being a family caregiver, connecting you with others who have journeyed down this and bringing a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline to you as a fellow caregiver. And a caregiver is hard enough.

It's harder when you're doing it alone. And we're glad that you're with us. We're talking with Ellen Ritberg. She is from Long Island. I learned how to say that today. Long Island.

Long Island. And she is she's an attorney. She's a journalist. She's an author. She's a caregiver. And her new book is called Why is Grandma Naked? Caring for your aging parent, which I love that.

And I didn't tell John ahead of time. Oh, yeah. Because I want to just go in cold, you know. Well, and we as we talked about earlier, we are big fans of humor and and the the way it can be used to really help out a family caregiver and get and get us through some really difficult times or even just be able to process it afterward, like we were talking earlier. So I just I really appreciate your you know, you putting this kind of work out there. So, you know, thank you. Thank you. This book comes out next month. Can you believe that spring is a week from I mean, a month from Saturday? Don't say things like that.

Yeah. Out where I am in southwest Montana of an Iraqi spring seems like a distant construct here. In fact, it's so cold today. How cold is it?

It's so cold Starbucks is serving coffee on a stick. There you go in. But anyway, no. So when this book comes out and would you would you sit down to to share this book with people and say, OK, this is my new book. Your publisher, your family, all that stuff. What was the response to the title? Well, actually, I brainstormed the title with my two two of my three kids, one of whom's a stand up comedian. And he helped me.

Yeah, he helped me. We all like. How about this? And we bandied things about just like we were we were comedians sitting in a writing room. And once we said, why is grandma naked? It is perfect because that really happens. You know, I don't know if some of your caregivers that are caregivers of people who are older or suffering from dementia, you will find they they want to take off their clothes and they don't.

They just start to do anything wrong with it. And the first time they do it is in my mom's house because I moved in with mom. She lived on two quite major streets in her community with a big picture window. And there she was standing at the at the bridge table and not quite in the altogether, but certainly not in the state of dress that she would ever, ever be in in front of an open window. And I will.

What are you doing? And what just out of curiosity, what was her answer? Of course, she gave me that kind of smile with, you know, a shrug of the shoulder.

She was she was very verbal that she hadn't declined all that much. But those inhibitions just will stay. You know, I can tell you a couple of a couple of ones that are just they go right out the window real fast.

Would you like me to show you one of them, for example? Yes, absolutely. Keep it family friendly for John. OK, totally family friendly.

And it's not it's not really gross, but they love to explore their nostrils and the insides of their mouths. I like that. Well, we can tell you're a writer because that was a lovely wordsmithing on that. Descriptive. Well, you know, exploring. And I think what what you've done in this book, Ellen and and I think it's going to you.

I'd like to I'd like to find out if you get this feedback indeed. I think what you're going to do in this book is help people not be so freaked out about some of this stuff. I hope so. Yeah.

In fact, I'm almost certain of it. Is that you're going when the people are going to read this are going to say, oh, OK, OK. All right. So this is not abnormal.

This is not something I need to go see a shrink about. This is something that's just part of the journey. And and and it's it's going to be OK. And I think you've you've tried you've done an amazing job of de-stigmatizing. Is that a word, John?

Check that out. I was going to say normalizing de-stigmatizing. De-stigmatizing sounds so much more.

But yeah, you you have you've normalized this a little bit and taken away a little bit of the embarrassment of sting or the the uncomfortability of it. Discomfort of it. How about that, John? Because that was not a word.

Uncomfortability. But I'd like to make up things as I go along. But no, I think this is important, Ellen, because you you know, you were there and you have the ability to use words to help other people to not freak out so much. And and your words are comforting. They're they're engaging.

They're they're they're they still ascribe dignity to the individuals and and help depressurize the fear that's in our own hearts of, oh, my God. Well, you know, this is this thing's coming off the rails. Well, yeah, it is a little bit. But that's OK.

It's going to be all right. Your kids, by the way, I'd love to. Was your son involved with with any of your caregiving journey with with his grandmother? Well, they would come to visit and they'd observe things. And sometimes they didn't realize something was happening. And they I needed to explain to them because mom's decline, you know, they might have missed. I don't I didn't always tell them, like, you know, grandma is at this stage exactly.

And they come to visit. And for example, for example, incontinence. OK, incontinence.

I have a nice chapter that's left out loud, funny about incontinence. And they come to a point sometimes, unfortunately, where you think they're in pain and they're sitting at a table with their grand grandson or daughter. And my son turned to me and he said, he said, no, he said to grandma, grandma, are you OK?

Grandma was OK, but he was OK. She was taking a moment there. Yes. I love it. That's a wonderful phrase.

Thank you. One of your one of your fellow Long Islanders, Jim Brewer, comedian Jim Brewer was on our show some years ago. And he talked about that with his dad. He took his dad on the road with him when he was doing stuff. And I don't know if you remember him or not from Saturday Night Live and Tool Time and all these other things he's done. But it was just a wonderful tribute to his father. Yeah, he he he talked about it.

But he he did it. So so was so much humor and clever ways of saying it that it took away all the. Oh, my God. And we're just like, oh, yeah, this is just life. It's just life. And so I'm a big fan of stand up comedians.

So we may have to have your son on the show as well. And because we love you because the humor is so critical to this journey. And I've said this often. And I'm gonna leave you with this quote. I want to hear your response to it. As caregivers, we we have no shortage of tears, but the laughter is is very scarce. Respond to that really quickly.

Just 30 seconds or so. It touches a place in your heart that's very, very different than any other experience, except maybe when you're a parent of very young children. It's this little, soft and wonderful place. Well said, a little soft and wonderful place.

And that's where our humor can help us live a little bit easier in those places. This is Ellen Rittberg. Her Web site is at Ellen Rittberg dot com. Ellen Rittberg R I T T B E R G dot com. And we'll link to this on the podcast. Why is grandma naked?

Caring for your aging parent. I love it. Ellen, thank you so much for being a part of the show today. I really appreciate you. My pleasure. All right. Well, we're going to hear from you again. We'll be right back. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization Standing with Hope. When my wife, Gracie, gave up both of her legs following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager. And she tried to save them for years.

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