Is There Skilled Nursing Care? This is a question to raise when you are choosing a place to spend your final years. In fact, the question is fundamental to the issue of a secure future. Living in a retirement community will not cure your diabetes or your osteoarthritis. It will not even guarantee that you […]
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I have never seen a total eclipse of the sun and never hope to see one. Not that I never wished to, but not all my wishes have come true. This is not a complaint. A great many wonders have become true experiences, though I never had a bucket list. My life has just been […]
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Here in the place where I live, the population is old. That’s the nature of life in a retirement village. But none of us were always old. We have been places and done things. We have stories to tell. Lately I have been asked by several different groups to talk about what is happening in […]
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Forgetting? Here in the retirement home, who isn’t forgetting? A few weeks ago I forgot to go to my book club. I love book club. The prevalence of active book clubs was one of the reasons I wanted to live here. I can’t believe I forgot book club. I think I just forgot that it […]
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Is There a Chaplain in the House? If you are helping an elderly person choose an assisted care community, be sure to ask: Is there a chaplain? This is not a minor detail. It is one of the essentials. Anytime you have a building full of elderly people, as you do in such a […]
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Once a friend of mine, visiting in a nursing home for the elderly, said “Merry Christmas” at the bedside of a woman who then began to cry and said, “I didn’t know it was Christmas.” My friend was angry. She had heard Christmas music in the lobby, but there was none on […]
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Before I moved to the retirement community, I was alone in a big house, responsible for the meals I ate, the dirty dishes, my laundry, the kitchen floor, shopping, fetching the mail, taking out the trash and knocking the unexpected snow off the awning over my deck. And my doctor kept asking what I […]
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In October, I sat on the porch with Bee, another resident here. I was in one of the big white rocking chairs that always seem to invite me to sit awhile. My friend was in her wheelchair. The day was sunny, the sky brilliant, and across the road the strip of forest that protects us […]
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Should residing in an assisted living/ retirement home enable me to escape the chaos of the world? This may not be a question that anyone is saying aloud, but one that voices a secret hope, a need that has grown out of our weariness. A tough week caused me to wonder. Fires in California, the […]
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Retirement communities are not all alike. Before making a choice about where to live, you must understand the basic options, how they differ and how these differences affect your lifestyle. The question is: What kind of living situation do you want? I am writing this just after a disturbing experience. The woman I chose to […]
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