Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

We're each slugging along at our own pace.

Once the decision was made, the rush was on to find an assisted living community for my mother. The plan was for her to live there until she was strong enough (or convinced enough) to move out to where I live. This temporary solution in assisted living is called respite care, which is a way to hike up the monthly rate by providing a furnished studio apartment for up to 90 days, but at least you don’t have to pay the community fee (a one-time fee of several thousand dollars) or move in with any more than your clothing and a few family photos.

Being there would also be a break for me from being around and on-call. After having put my new life on hold to return to a place where I never felt at home, I was increasingly feeling that it was a sacrifice. I needed to leave before resentment billowed.

In a month, I’d return to take her to a follow-up medical appointment (after, thankfully, my brother and sister-in-law flew down amid Hurricane Milton for the procedure that should have happened when I was there but had been postponed) and pack up the clothes she wanted to bring with her. They will barely fill a suitcase, since so few clothes fit her since she’s shriveled in the past year. After living in Florida for more than ten years, her wardrobe is decidedly not appropriate for anything chillier than an air conditioner on full blast in 100-degree weather.

I’m trying to envision and manifest us living together in joyful harmony, her in her part of the house and me in mine, having an aide come regularly to help her and free me from taking care of her bodily functions. Would this test the limits of honoring one’s mother? What would I gain and lose in the arrangement? And, being honest with myself and my roommate limitations, I also wondered what she would gain and lose in the arrangement. To be ready for the failure or the reality (framing is key) contingency, I already visited an assisted living community in her soon-to-be hometown.

How people do the assisted living search when they work full-time or live out-of-town and possibly with youngish ones at home is beyond me. It was all-consuming: finding the places (even with the help of ‘A Place for Mom’) and getting input from people who’ve been down this road, conducting phone interviews and checking out websites, to winnow down the list of places to visit for what the standard mid-day hour-long tour. At least it was a short burst of time, but still, thinking about where would be best for someone else to live is not an easy task. It’s like looking for a present: when does what they want overtake what you would want to receive?

After visiting six places in one week, I was ok leaving aside the tainted word “facility” and using the more pleasant “community.” But “facility” had been hovering over me as I began the search, remembered the overwhelming smell of urine and decay from visiting my grandmother when she was in an old-age home. I had feared what I would face, and how I would rise to the occasion of needing to have a life but also respecting my mother’s right to live in a stink-free environment. Is the smell, I wondered as I was told the costs, the difference between what each could afford?

When I started the search, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but when I finished, I realized that there were a few pass/fail elements. Obviously, no smell. This was a challenge that each place I visited passed.

Next was length of hallways, which was not something that had been on my list before I started my visits. With most residents using walkers (my mother now included in that number) or wheelchairs (where they propel themselves by their feet, shuffling while seated) this turned out to be very important. It was surprising, then, to see that some corridors were so long that I figured this was how they got around providing daily exercise classes, since just getting to the dining room was an exhausting hike.

The dining room and food were, of course, important. This was one item that my mother was interested in, asking to see sample menus. She was pleased to see that pork wasn’t the mainstay of the place that I thought best for her.

The daily activities were also important for me, and I studied the calendar from each place as if it was a college course catalog. My mother, who thought that she would get out of doing any exercise and just sit in her room like at home, was less than enthused about the daily chair exercise and brain twisters that I was excited to tell her about. Once she won a round of trivia with her knowledge of baseball, thanks to my father and his love of New York baseball, she found this activity to be worthy of her time. We were both pleased to see that bingo was only a weekly event and that she could nap in the afternoon when the card players took over. I bet the dollar I put on her refrigerator door for bingo is still there.

Still to come. The people I met during those assisted-living community visits, with some positive stereotyping. How my mother turned from a non-believer to a believer. Re-living the stress of a high school cafeteria.

Have you been through this journey? I’d love to hear from you.