Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Lutsel K'e (Aug 28/00) - Terry Enzo has put her entire future on hold to take care of an elder in need.

She and her common-law husband, Andy Houle, decided to give up their home and move in with 94-year-old Marie Casaway last December.

Casaway's health is deteriorating and she requires 24-hour care, but funding is not available to provide a full-time home-care worker for elders in the community. If Enzo and Houle had not taken it upon themselves to care for Casaway, she would have had to move to a larger community.

"My common-law and I talked about it and it seemed like none of our relatives wanted to keep her so I said 'she's still my auntie so let's move in with her and take care of her,'" said Enzo.

Since December, she has been tending to Casaway's every need. That involves cooking meals and feeding her, giving her medication every day and making her feel comfortable when the pain from arthritis gets to be too much.

"You get to the stage when you go back to a baby again. That's how she is, she's just like a baby," she said.

It's a tough job

Casaway has other relatives in town, but Enzo is the only family member who will agree to spend more than a few hours with her.

She has asked several relatives to watch Casaway on the weekends so she can have time for herself, but since she moved in eight months ago, she hasn't had any free time at all.

"I can't even go out. I can't take any time for myself and my common-law. She wakes me up at 5 o'clock in the morning and it's very stressful," she said.

Enzo had hoped to attend college in the fall to complete a cooking course, but Casaway begged her to stay.

"I packed up and she just cried with all her heart so I just ended up staying again.

"I wanted my son to go to school somewhere else ... but it just didn't work out because there is nobody else to take care of her.

"She said 'I never found anyone that took care of me like you did,' so I just decided I was going to keep her until she's gone," said Enzo, her voice shaking with emotion.

She had hoped to make a better life for herself and her two sons.

They are both attending school in Lutsel K'e, but her 15-year-old son Alex claims he learns the same material every year.

"It's important for my kids to move. Education is more important. That's how it is nowadays," she said.

Home is Lutsel K'e

Casaway lived at the Aven Centre in Yellowknife for a short period, but asked to go home because she was not happy.

"My mother took her out of there because she was crying and she said the meals were not the same, people didn't speak Chipewyan and she never had the traditional food over there," said Enzo.

Despite the difficulties of devoting all of her time to caring for Casaway, Enzo wants to take care of another elder as well.

"I want to watch him because he puts something on the stove and he will forget and walk out. Then we hear the smoke detector going off all the time."

Fortunately, Enzo is a janitor in the apartment complex where Casaway and the other elder reside. She has a master key to the other apartments and is able to extinguish small flames in his apartment before any fires get out of control.

"That's happened about five times now," she said.

Elders deserve support

Enzo doesn't mind taking care of elders. She believes that's the way things are supposed to be.

"That's how it was when I was growing up, that's how I was taught, to respect your elders and take care of them. I was told that by my grandfather so many times and now I'm doing it," she said.

Enzo's common-law husband said more people in the community should volunteer their time with elders.

"I was always under the impression that elders should always come first in our culture," said Houle.

"Everybody should take care of elders. Not just in native communities but also in other cultures because they don't have very much time left and we should try to make things as comfortable for them as possible.

"That's basically what we're trying to do right now," he added.