"Clay Aiken urges reaching out"

New article about Clay from the United Press International

Caregiving: Clay Aiken urges reaching out
Consumer Health

By ALEX CUKAN
UPI Correspondent

Clay Aiken's most recent tour, Joyful Noise Tour 2, used the theme from the title track of his 2004 platinum Christmas album "Merry Christmas With Love" -- a theme that family is more than people with whom you are related.

At the end of the show, Aiken introduces the cast and says that when he was a child in Raleigh N.C., he spent the holidays with parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins, but since going on tour, the cast and musicians have become family as well.

"You don't have to be around people you are related to be with family," Aiken told the audience at the end of the show in Boston recently.

Aiken wove the theme of "Merry Christmas With Love," about an older woman who has no reason to celebrate until carolers appear outside her home and she joins them singing and recaptures her Christmas sprit.

In the show, an older woman, played by Aiken's former high school choir director, Alison Lawrence of Raleigh, finds no reason to celebrate Christmas after her husband died and her married son moved away.

But a single mother with several children and holiday problems of her own takes the trouble to get her a gift and sends her 9-year-old son Thomas to deliver it for her.

Thomas is a talkative child who gets the older woman to open up and recall her fond memories of past holidays.

The boy, whose mother had her hands full and didn't have a lot of time for him, discovered a friendship with the older woman and invites her to his Christmas pageant at his church on Christmas Day. The boy and the older woman agree it's important to spend the holiday with people you care about, whether related or not.

"We're not very good at building community," Patrick F. Fagan, Heritage Foundation research fellow in family and cultural issues, told UPI's Caregiving.

"Families have moved apart physically and emotionally and in their absence, we have not been as inclusive as we could -- the culture of the American family is changing and the family provides the main infrastructure of care."

About 27 percent of U.S. families provide caregiving to an elderly parent, but while this is a large number, three-quarters of the population may have no idea of the amount of sacrifice it takes to provide caregiving to an elderly parent.

Christmas gives a handy excuse to reach out to not only the elderly who may be alone, but their caregivers as well who are often as isolated.

One suggestion: Encourage the elderly to talk about holidays in the past -- it's something they enjoy, and it can be informative to others. A grandchild of a friend of Caregiving was intrigued by his grandmother's account on Thanksgiving of life before the automobile.

Families that provide caregiving -- especially those in the latter stages --very rarely get a break and get very little in support from either the government or society; they could use some attention and support, not only on Christmas, but the rest of the year as well. They carry a very large burden, and they often carry it alone.

"What caregivers do is a very generous gift to society, and they make life better for everybody -- except themselves. They pay a price," said Fagan.

This Christmas Aiken's extended family will get a bit larger. His family gathers at his grandparents' home -- his grandfather has Alzheimer's disease -- and he will mix his North Carolina family with members of his musical family who can't make it home while the tour stops for four days in Raleigh during Christmas. In addition, some of the buddies of his younger brother, Brett, who joined the U.S. Marines after high school and is currently stationed at Camp Lejeune, will also join the celebration.

The 36-city tour ends Dec. 29-30 in Clearwater, Fla.

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Alex Cukan is an award-winning journalist, but she always has considered caregiving her primary job. UPI welcomes comments and questions about this column. E-mail: consumerhealth@upi.com