This is the second in a series about creating photo (and other) books to help you, your family, and future caregivers focus on the richness and significance of your life - instead of primarily on infirmities you might develop.

Many people become forgetful as they age, for one reason or another. Photo books - genuine printed books, not photo albums - can help reinforce who they are and what makes their lives unique. These professional-looking, full-color picture-and-text books are inexpensive to create and can make a big difference in your quality of life as you age.

Imagine that you are a young aide in an assisted living center or a long-term care facility. Imagine that you are assigned to assist a number of old people who need help with bathing, dressing, eating and/or other basic tasks. (People under the age of 30 consider anyone over the age of 60 to be "old.")

You may love your job and treat your assigned residents with respect. Yet you may know and focus mostly on what they can no longer do for themselves. That's natural. After all, it is those gaps that give you your job.

But those residents are not simply failing bodies or declining minds. They are three-dimensional people who most likely have led lives very different from yours. They may have been experts in various fields, traveled to places you've only dreamed of, and held jobs you never even knew existed. They may have raised families in situations quite unfamiliar to you, and actively championed causes that you thought were long settled.

You might be fascinated to learn about their lives. But how can you do so? They may no longer be able to organize information clearly, or may assume that they've told you something before, or think that you know all about a topic that is foreign to you.

However, if they can share with you photo books that include stories about important or funny or unusual events that the pictures reflect, you might see them in a whole new light. They're no longer simply "the man with a cane in room 368 who needs help dressing," or "the lady with diabetes in room 279." Instead, they become "the artist who volunteered for the Peace Corps after college," or "the schoolteacher who taught a thousand children how to read," or "the engineer who helped design space vehicles," or "the single mother whose children never realized they were poor until long after they grew up."

Ask yourself who is likely to get better care. Is it someone known to his caregivers only for what he can no longer do for himself, and the tasks he therefore adds to their workload? Or is it someone known to them for the wacky vacations he used to take his family on, his creative coaching of his employees, his volunteer work to help people with disabilities, and his life-long passion for jazz?

For a number of years, I was a lead trainer in a conflict resolution program called Alternatives to Violence. The first tenet of the program is called affirmation. It means that genuinely hearing and acknowledging what people feel is important about themselves -- what they care about, what they're skilled in, and so forth -- is the first essential step towards resolving conflict. Without affirmation, little progress can be made, because the parties start out feeling ignored, disrespected, discounted, and almost invisible.

I think a similar point is true when people start to need some help managing the details of their lives and personal care. It's hard for them to feel valued and play an active role if the entire interaction is about what they can't do any more. It's as if they have disappeared and what's left in their place is ... an old person! Someone with none of their strengths and a number of unwelcome limitations! Photo books can help remind them and their caregivers of the work and relationships they have valued, the experiences that delight them, and the ways in which they have made the world a better place.

Future columns will talk about more uses for photo books and how to go about creating them.