Jeannine Harpell (RIGHT) walks with Stella Fontaine during a sunny afternoon at the senior community Heritage Village in Unionville. July 16, 2015. (Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Relatively few childless adults reside in assisted living and continuous care communities today. Why? There were no adult children to convince them to make the move. This article is a continuation of the August 6 and August 13 blogs about the key planning targets child-free Baby Boomers need to consider. The focus in this one is relocation and residential decision making.
The following is a true story from my book; the names have been changed:
For five years, Evelyn had tried to convince her widowed mother, Jean, then eighty-seven, to move out of her multi-story house near downtown Buffalo, New York, where she had been living for fifty-six years. Jean had been adamant about not moving until one night she became dizzy and disoriented, lost her balance and took a fall in the bathroom. She hit her head on the edge of the sink, passed out for a couple of hours and woke up in a pool of her own blood. She managed to make her way to a phone and called Evelyn, who lived several hours away. Evelyn called for an ambulance, then quickly dressed and started the three-hour drive to the hospital.
After the accident, Jean reconsidered her position on staying in her own home. Waking up in pain and alone had scared her, and she didn’t want to risk another fall. A week later, Evelyn again talked to Jean about moving to a safer place. This time her mom agreed to look at a few possibilities.
Evelyn began spending her weekends researching and visiting assisted living facilities in her area. Jean found two to show her mother. Jean didn’t like either one, pronouncing them “too institutional.”
Evelyn kept looking, this time with the help of a geriatric care manager (GCM) who was more familiar with all the options for senior living in her area. The GCM introduced Evelyn to a spacious, one-level, suburban residence that had been converted into a board-and-care home. The man and woman who owned and ran it were both licensed practical nurses and they appeared to be dedicated to their calling. The house had a homey and comfortable feel. Evelyn met the two current residents, who seemed happy and well cared for. She also contacted their families, who told her they were very impressed with the kindness and attention their older loved ones were receiving. Like Jean, the other residents needed supervision, but otherwise were relatively independent, still mobile, and required no intense care. They were happy to be living in a comfortable home with no responsibilities for cooking, cleaning, or household upkeep of any kind. Everyone had their own bedroom and bath, and could have privacy or companionship, as they chose.
To Evelyn’s delight, Jean agreed to “give it a try.” Together they spent the next six months getting Jean packed and moved. She was reluctant to get rid of anything, but in the end agreed to give most of her prized possessions to her grandchildren and give the rest to charity.
There were a few setbacks in her adjustment to the new life, but after two years, Jean finally agreed to let her daughter and son-in-law sell the old family home—a major milestone. Jean is happy and well cared for. She gets frequent visits from Evelyn and her two nearby grandkids, one with a new baby—her first great grandchild.
Evelyn and Jean’s story is an all-too-common scenario in which the adult child or children become convinced mom and/or dad, typically in their late seventies or eighties, should no longer be driving or navigating the stairs in their aging, multi-story home, and the time has come for them to live in a safer place. The adult children then help them “shop” for a new community and assist in the difficult and emotional task of sorting through a lifetime of accumulated “stuff.” Once the cherished possessions and memorabilia have been given to family members, sold, or thrown away, adult children help their aging parents move into the new smaller and safer space – one where they have help and companionship. Following the transition, the adult children often handle the real estate transaction to sell or rent the home in which the parents resided.
Where there are no adult children to push the issue, most older people simply stay where they are and cope as best they can. In fact, even when there are adult children in the picture, many are not able to convince the parent to move to a safer location. For many elders, the challenge of learning to navigate a new home (even a much smaller space), meet new people, give up familiar surroundings, and relinquish their treasured independence seems loathsome, insurmountable, or both.
Finding the right retirement community, negotiating a contract, downsizing, selling a home, and moving are challenging at any time of life. Any one of those tasks can be daunting and time-consuming. Managing all of them in a short period of time can be overwhelming to someone in their 80s or 90s. Solo agers (people who don’t have children or are aging alone) need to consider where they might live later in life–before a crisis happens. If you or someone dear to you is a solo ager, the best time to do the research and locate the next home is before you need it.