October 14, 2025

From Spare Change to Deep Connection Down Memory Lane

October 14, 2025

From Spare Change to Deep Connection Down Memory Lane

Reigniting Meaning in Daily Life

Your mother is stuck indoors much of the time due to her infirmity. You don’t just want her to be a patient, the object of your caregiving. You want her to thrive and have meaning in her life.

Encouraging Engagement and Purpose

You may want her to resume her previous activities and hobbies. You want her to go out, initiate projects around the house, pick up the phone to call a friend, plan a family gathering, not just sit there waiting for lunch. It’s hard to reignite old passions and pastimes when she is tuned into her own body and its ailments.

Rediscovering the Joy of Personal Treasures

Why not start with her own things, her collections, photos, and mementos? She’ll be happy to tell you about when the things were purchased, collected, or gifted to her. It will bring her back to good times of yore and relationships of the past.

Turning Memories into a Legacy Project

A trip down memory is always fun but if you record the history and jot down a few lines on an index card about each item, you are giving it importance. You can plan to set up a “museum” type display for the next time the family gathers in her home. Perhaps she will decide to gift some of them to some of her grandchildren. The next step would take place another time when you gather wrapping paper, ribbon, and cards to formalize the gift and explain the history and meaning of the item. If you focus time and careful encouragement on the things in the house, you can extend the activity of going through things into a short-term project or legacy project.

Building Connection Through Photos

Photos are an effortless way to build projects that have deep meaning for your mother as well as her relatives. Plan to spend some time going through a photo album with her. Scan the photos with your phone as she tells you about the occasions and events depicted in the snapshots and formal portraits. Tales of ancestors, happy occasions, and forgotten friends and family members will emerge.

Bringing the Past into the Present

Besides spending a pleasurable afternoon in the past, sending those photos to a photo printing site such as Shutterfly or Snapfish will extend the activity. Download the app and order the copies during your visit, while you are sitting with mom. Don’t talk about it, don’t discuss your plans or what you are doing. Keep it a surprise. Order a few prints each of some meaningful photos (not all of them).

Creating Shared Moments Across Generations

When the photos arrive in the mail, together you can organize them into envelopes for each of the grandchildren. She can give them during their next visit, thus prompting conversation then and there, something that is hard for both generations during a visit. If you keep doing this with other albums and photos, you will see that a deeper connection between the generation will develop as they learn about their grandmother’s history and their own forbears. It’s a huge return on investment of a couple of pennies per picture.

Building a Family Archive of Love and Legacy

At some point, as the photo souvenir collections build up with gifts of several at each visit you can buy the kids photo albums to store them in. It will demonstrate that you, too, value the history and sense of family that is being shared. You are also investing. Your children will want to label them and learn more about family history. Thus, you will have developed not only a meaningful project for your frail parent but built a sense of pride and connection to the past in your own progeny. They will have their own collections of historic family photos. What better rewards will you get from a couple of cheap photo prints of the past?

Caring Professionals has lots of resources for caregivers:

About the Author

Faigie Horowitz

Faigie Horowitz, MS serves as director of communication at Caring Professionals. She advocates for the senior population on the state level and writes about senior and caregiver issues. She is a columnist for several periodicals. She has spent decades in nonprofit management and serves as a lay leader and founder of several community organizations.