Welcome

Welcome to the Peels, Granma website. This site is dedicated to the memory of Beulah, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and ultimately died of complications of that terrible disease.

It is also dedicated to Beulah’s caregiver, Consuelo, who despite language and cultural differences, was able to make a connection with Beulah to support her, love her, and enhance some of the final years of her life.

And finally, this site is dedicated to Beulah’s friends and family who spent time with, assisted and loved her.

Beulah’s decline into dementia was a very sad and difficult thing for her loved ones to see. And when she reached the point where she could no longer live alone, her children faced some difficult decisions regarding her living arrangements and daily care.

She was aware that she would eventually need to live in a nursing home, but Beulah was not ready to leave the house that she and her husband had worked so hard to purchase and maintain, where she had raised a family and lived for nearly 50 years.

So my wife and I put our careers on hold and brought our family to Iowa to care for Granma. Coming from our home in Mexico, Consuelo and our children would be adapting to the very different environment of a Midwestern town, as we came to live in the house where I had grown up, more than 20 years after I had left Iowa.

Much had changed in my hometown of Waterloo since I had left there. Many original residents had abandoned the city in the early 1980’s due to the recession and resulting massive layoffs at the town’s main employer, Deere and Company. However, in the early twenty-first century the economy had improved and the population was growing again.

And that population growth included thousands of residents from Mexico and Central America who had come to work in nearby meat processing operations.

As we arrived in Waterloo on a hot August afternoon in 2003, we had no idea of the trials, struggles, successes, happiness and sadness that we would experience there.  But through the bittersweet experience of caring for her, we all had some very special moments in a house that was filled with love.

Central to that love was the relationship between Beulah and Consuelo. Although they did not speak the same language, they had both been professional educators who came from very similar backgrounds in life.

The two of them would eventually develop their own means of interpersonal communication as a level of trust grew between them. And as Consuelo learned more English words, there was one phrase of hers that always brought a smile to Beulah’s face when it was time for her to take her medicine – “Peels, Granma!”