CAREGIVING · PERSONAL STORY My Dad Needed Help Showering — and I Had No Idea What I Was Doing By Traci Cole · The Dignity Bath & Spa

He was living with dementia, and one of the hardest things I had to figure out, practically speaking, was how to help him shower. I thought that would be the hard part,  the shower itself. I was wrong. Caregiving starts long before anyone steps into a bathroom.

It starts with the small things. The things that make a person them.

I found myself asking questions I had never once thought about before: What clothes did my dad like to wear? Did he prefer his shirts pressed at the dry cleaners? What kind of pajamas did he sleep in? Did he get cold at night? What soap did he use? What shampoo had been sitting on his shelf for thirty years?

These things sound small. They are not small. They are dignity.

Because of the dementia, my dad sometimes couldn’t tell me anymore. He couldn’t always remember what he liked. So I called my mom. She had cared for him before he came to live with me, and she filled in the gaps I didn’t know I had.

I remembered that my dad had always been a proud man - pressed shirts, professional shoes. Our family had owned a dry cleaners, so I knew what neat and sharp meant to him. I kept taking his shirts in. I kept getting his pants pressed. Even when so much else had changed, that hadn’t. Even with dementia, dignity still matters. 

Maybe more than ever.· · ·

Then came the shower.

I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I didn’t want to take away what little privacy he had left. So I would lay his clothes out, warm up the bathroom, turn the shower on and then try to guide him from the other side of the door. His voice. My voice. A bathroom door between us.

When I’d go back in afterward to collect his clothes, I’d sometimes realize he hadn’t fully undressed. Or hadn’t washed completely. And I’d feel that quiet, heavy guilt that caregivers know - the guilt of not being sure you’re doing enough, not being sure you’re doing it right.

And underneath all of that: I was scared. I didn’t have grab bars yet. No shower chair. I didn’t even know what water temperature felt right to him anymore. Every shower felt like a negotiation between his safety and his self-respect, and I felt like I was losing both.

Looking back now, I know there were tools that could have helped us — adaptive bathing products, caregiver resources, things designed specifically for this exact moment I was standing in. At the time, I couldn’t find them. I didn’t know what to search for. I didn’t know that what I needed had a name.

That’s part of why I created The Wrap.

If something like it had existed for us then, I believe it would have changed things. A modesty wrap that stays on during the shower  that lets a caregiver help safely while a loved one keeps their privacy  would have given both of us something we needed. It would have let me stand closer. It would have let him stay covered. It would have made the space between us feel less like a compromise and more like care.

Caregiving is a journey I’m still learning from. Some things I figured out along the way. Others I wish I had known on day one. But this I know for certain: when someone you love needs help, they would take care of themselves if they could. They are not choosing this.

And when we show up for them - with patience, with gentleness, with a little more dignity than yesterday - it matters more than we will ever fully understand.

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The Wrap was born from this story.

Designed by a caregiver, for caregivers, so no one else has to figure it out alone the way I did. If you’re caring for someone right now, know that you are not alone. And know that there are tools that can help.

Learn more at www.dignity-bath.com