VOICES: I Built a Documentary Out of Guilt: What My Dad and Other Caregivers Taught Me

Peter Murphy Lewis is a documentary filmmaker, former Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), and the creator of the multi-state docuseries “People Worth Caring About.” After a decade building businesses in South America, he returned to the U.S. to confront the reality of caregiving  — a journey that took him from the boardroom to the bedside.

I’ll never forget the air in Santiago, Chile. It smelled like roasting coffee and the relentless push of professional ambition. I was 32, sitting in a glass-walled office, managing a travel company I had built from the ground up. By every external metric, I was a success.

Then my phone rang. It was a call from Kansas.

My grandfather, Ted, had just passed away. It was June 6, 2009.

As I sat there, three thousand miles away, the memories that rushed back weren’t just of the man who taught me that I was never above cleaning a bathroom or cutting a lawn. I remembered the man who paid me $5 to learn the name of every single one of his employees at the bank he built into a financial staple of our small town.

But I also remembered the sad times — the many examples where dignity had been taken from one of the most dignified men I’d ever met as dementia took over his life.

There were times he’d been found wandering in his pajamas. There were times he had signed blank checks, not knowing who he was giving them to. Thank goodness we were raised in a small town where people did the right thing. My family was lucky; the people in that town gave the checks back, though they could have easily cashed them for $10,000 or $20,000.

I was across an ocean while he was losing his soul and his memory. I was a body in South America; he was a body in Kansas. I didn’t know how to be a grandson from that distance.

Janet and Ted

The “villagers” who stood in the gap

While I was building my business, women like Lina May and Sug — sisters of Edith from the local bank — were doing the work. They, along with Sue McDowell, were the ones who could actually reach out and guide my grandpa back to warmth. They provided the physical presence for him, and later for my grandmother Janet (who entered assisted living in 2004 and passed July 11, 2012), that I simply couldn’t provide from another continent.

That realization was the first step of the long road that eventually brought me home.

The stigma of the “successful” grandson

By the time I finally moved back to the United States, close to a decade later, Grandpa and Grandma were gone. Ted and Janet were both gone. I was left with a heavy, quiet caregiver guilt; I had missed the window to hold their hands.

Most of this guilt lived in my subconscious for years. 

It wasn’t until 2020 — when I was recruited to work as the vice president of marketing for an electronic healthcare records (EHR) company — that I started to put two and two together. In that job, I started a podcast called LTC 100 (now People Worth Caring About), and I decided to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), working on the floor under the guidance of Robert, the experienced CNA who took me under his wing and taught me the hands-on realities of frontline care.

It was during this time that I realized CNAs are so much more than caregivers — they have the medical training to care for our grandparents when we can’t. But I also realized that whether we are a CNA or not, we should all be caregivers.

All citizens bear a responsibility to be caregivers of our seniors.

This was a lesson I learned from my dad. He was the exact example of this; he went and had breakfast or lunch five, six, or seven days a week with my grandparents, even though he wasn’t a CNA. All of these people — Lina May, Sug, Sue McDowell, and my father —knew my grandparents’ daily rhythms better than I. Yet, at that time, I barely knew the depth of their sacrifice.

Janet

I made a documentary out of guilt

After becoming a CNA in 2021, I realized I could line up my years of experience in television as a storyteller to do a show similar to Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs. I wanted to make a difference so that there would be more Roberts in this world, more Sugs and Lina Mays in this world, and more people like my dad.

I decided I could tell their story through the eyes of a caregiver. This is how People Worth Caring About was born, in conjunction with the support of the Nebraska Healthcare Association and the visionary Jalene Carpenter.

Breaking the shround of invisible care

I would have never guessed back in 2012, when I got that phone call in Santiago, that I would eventually travel the country getting to tell Robert’s story and my father’s story on stage.

Lina May, Sug, Sue McDowell, and my father no longer sit along the bedsides of America’s seniors, but through People Worth Caring About, I now know there are thousands and millions of people who do the same work I once learned from my family. 

To date, we have documented over 130 stories across six seasons, featuring at least three caregivers per episode.

We are highlighting the impact of this growth by naming the heroes on the front lines across the nation:

• Nebraska: Chris at Brookestone View, who leads the morning charge for 60 residents, and Mary Jo, a CNA at Wakefield who reminds us that “even though we’re taking care of them, they’re kind of taking care of us, too.”
• Ohio:  Lavida, a memory care specialist at Glass Peaks who uses nostalgic sensory triggers like old records to connect with residents, and Dischell, a nurse who uses her own survival story to inspire those on ventilators.
• New Mexico: Michael, a former military police officer turned life-saving nurse and Jewel, a physical therapist at Red Rocks who incorporates the Navajo language into her therapy to honor the culture of her elders.
• Florida: Enrique Cateriano at Riviera Health Resort, and Miss Susan in Palm Beach, who has dedicated over 40 years to her residents.
• Kentucky: Filming this week with caregivers Maria and Laura.
• North Dakota: Heading there in two weeks to begin Season 6.

From the bedside to the keynote stage

My journey from “guilty grandson” to CNA to storyteller has allowed me to take these lessons to the biggest stages in the industry. 

In the last two years alone, I’ve given more than 20 keynotes — from Alaska to Florida, and at events like LTC 100 and AHCA/NCAL — sharing the vital connection between storytelling and caregiving.

Peter Murphy Lewis

We treat the buildings where our elders live as places of “sadness,” which inadvertently devalues the people who work there. It turns a noble calling into an invisible job. 

Through these 130+ stories and my time on stage, I am making sure they are invisible no longer.