It is hard to give up your home and your lifestyle for a new chapter - the final chapter.
Living here on Old People Island is like having training wheels for old age. We get to see, up close and personal, how the end game works for humans - the good, the bad, and the ugly. It isn't often pretty and it isn't easy either. One of the toughest choices to make is when to find an assisted living place to go to. And as I noted before, it is like selling out during an asset bubble - going too soon is better than too late!
Sure, maybe you sold out of that stock bubble before the peak, but you still did OK and did a lot better than the fellow who waited too long and ended up broke.
Similarly, it is better to move to a retirement community earlier than later. If you are somewhat younger and mobile, you can take part in the activities and bus tours and actually do things, make friends, and have some modicum of fun. If you wait until you are wheelchair-bound or bedridden, well, it is a different head entirely. And if you wait too long, you end up dying in your home, found trying to crawl across the floor to reach the cell phone (and never making it) leaving behind a trail of various bodily fluids as you shit and piss yourself. Meanwhile, you try fighting off your cats, who are trying to eat your face.
OK, I joke about the last part, but we did have a friend whose one worry in life was dying at home and having her cats eat her face (not kidding, her words exactly). And she die at home - but no word on the cat situation. In other instances, we have been to estate sales where there is a huge stain on the floor where the previous owner slowly passed away. It's a freaking horror show.
And like I said, that's why young people like horror movies and old people don't. We're living it, so some "scary dude" with a hockey mask and a knife doesn't seem nearly as scary as an oncologist in a lab coat. You'll get there someday yourself. Funny, isn't it, though, that the "monsters" in horror movies are often depicted as old and decrepit people (who oddly enough are quite handy with the cutlery).
But I digress.
It is hard - very hard - to make this decision. But yet another reason to go earlier than later is that, if you wait too long, the decision is made for you. The neighbors call the police as you are found in your bathrobe on the front lawn, screaming at the squirrels (as happened to the Dad of one friend of ours). The kids show up, go to court to be appointed custodian of their parent, and then pick a "home" to put him in. It often gets ugly. Better to make this choice yourself.
So how do you know when to leave? Well, there are telltale signs. When life starts to get harder and harder to do, that is one sign. You've stopped working in the yard, because you don't have the energy you used to have. You have a yard guy, but he just mows and your garden has gone to weeds. Keeping up with the laundry and dishes and cooking - even for one - is a lot of work, and you find yourself taking shortcuts, like wearing the same clothes all the time (which you put in the laundry at night and then put on again in the morning - bypassing that whole "putting away" deal). Maybe you find yourself skipping meals or going to the local restaurant more, for just a cheese sandwich, as you are too tired to cook.
And speaking of cooking, maybe the fire department has visited your home once or twice, when you put something on the stove and forgot about it. It happens - to anyone of any age. But when you are 80 or older, well, people start to talk.
As a result, many old people get embarrassed and worry about being "put in a home" so they start hiding what is going on. They socialize less, because they don't want people to see that they need help going up and down stairs, or can't stand for long periods of time. It is nothing to be ashamed of, but on Old People Island, well, they shame the crap out of you. And the shamers, a few years (or even months) later, find themselves being shamed. I fail to understand this aspect of aging - it isn't a game and no one wins at it - ever.
One old lady living alone (now deceased) locked herself out of the house. She was so worried that her children would find out and "put her in a home" that she lived in her car for several days, asking the local pharmacist for money to buy food. Yes, clearly she was losing her faculties, but why wait until something weird like this happens? Well, it does happen, because people say, "I still have my faculties, so I don't need to make plans for my future!" And yet, we lose our faculties so slowly that, well, we wake up one day and its too damn late. There's a dead cat in the freezer. Well, he won't eat your face, at least.
Small car accidents or incidents are another sign - and could be deadly. My own Grandfather had to give up his license when he drove though a storefront in Kerrville, Texas. Classic gas/brake pedal confusion incident - it can happen to anyone (I did it at age 23, but didn't hit anything). Scraping the car getting out of the garage, backing into things (or other cars) in the parking lot. The worst case scenario - which we see on I-95 with regularity - is an oldster driving the wrong way on the Interstate an causing a fatal head-on. Someone did a video on YouTube about how some intersections and onramps are confusing and how easy it is, at night, to get on going the wrong way. Probably true, but you rarely hear about young people doing this, unless they are very, very drunk.
The cat-face lady went through this - being legally blind, they took away her license and she had no way to get groceries (in a pre-door-dash era). So she drove a golf cart on the road - also a no-no without a license. The State Patrol pulled her over and gave her a ticket. So she drove the golf cart on the bike path. Quite frankly, "legally blind" and over 80 is a slam-dunk "time to pick out a nice retirement community" indicator.
And some can be quite nice. I noted before Mark's Grandmother went to Shell Point in Ft., Meyers, Florida (shown above - not too shabby!) and had an apartment of her own. When she was unable to drive, she sold her car and relied on a local taxi or the shuttle bus to do her shopping. When she was unable to make meals for herself, they moved her to a hotel-like room with three meals a day. And when she could not walk, she was moved to a hospital-like room and cared for. Beats cats eating your face.
But like clockwork, the rest of the family criticized her choice, saying she was "too young" (70) to be in an "old folks home" and they were wrong on both counts. Shell Point has a golf course (maybe two or three) and million-dollar homes as well as dock space for your yacht. The stereotype of the "old folks home" as some decrepit fire-trap with oldsters in wheelchairs on the front porch, is outdated. You'll only end up in such a place if you don't make the choice while you are able to.
Of course, finding such a place can be hard to do and a little off-putting. Many oldsters move to a community near their family (adult children) on the premise that they will visit more often or be there if something goes wrong. Other choose exotic locations or places with nice weather. When touring such places, though, it can rub an oldster the wrong way. You go there and some cheery young person (i.e., under 40) says, "hi there! You're going to love it here, we have canasta tournaments!" And they show you some day room in the non-ambulatory department with a bunch of snoozing geezers watching game shows and you think, "Uh, maybe not!"
But that's why I say it pays to look early, rather than wait, as many such places have waiting lists to get in. And if you have a place in mind - and maybe even lined-up - you can make such a move at a later date, after you drive your car through the front window of Hobby Lobby - and not on purpose, either.
Cost is an issue for many, but many fail to understand the cost savings. A friend of ours balked at the $4000-a-month cost for one retirement community. On the one hand, it seems like a lot of money. On the other - have you seen what rents are like lately? $48,000 a year may seem like a lot, but is within the income level of many retirees. And often this includes a lot of amenities, such as one or more meals a day in the dining room. You may literally not have any other expenses. Or damn few, anyway.
What got me started on this is a friend - a very talented, smart, and intelligent friend - is finding themselves in a situation where life is getting harder to do - and some of the telltale signs are showing up. It is possible to remain in your home, if you have a bevy of volunteers to help you out - a neighbor to check in on you every few days, a friend to drive you to the grocery store, another friend to pull the dents out of your car, and so on and so forth. But relying on the kindness of strangers isn't always a good plan - they move away and they have lives of their own, or they may, themselves reach "that age" and no longer be able to help you.
And then you may end up like Blanche DuBois.
