RETIREMENT HOMES --YES OR NO

When I last wrote, we had just moved into a retirement home (at great expense) and I was in the dining room looking for those laughing, tanned couples I had seen in the promotional brichures. Alas, they were not there. I had a sinking feeling that I had gotten ourselves in a bad situation -- the vibes were not what I had thought they would be. It would be three years before we went AWOL, but we never regretted leaving the place. We had gone on a little vacation trip to Tucson. In Arizona the sun was shining, I heard voices laughing, and we went to the bar next door and had an old fashioned. That was it. I didn't care what the children would say- I wanted out.

Now I don't want to say that there are not people who tend to flourish in retirement homes. They just have different personalities, or needs, than we did. Or they chose retirement "providers" who were not as rapacious as the one we chose. The decision of whether to go into continuing care or not is one that requires a lot of searching, and thought. Here are some pointers from my own experience.

Watch out for the private chains -- though they label themselves as "non-profit" they know how to maximize income. There is good money in these homes. The one we lived in charged for everything. If you had a package delivered byUPS to the front desk, they charged five dollars to bring it up. Exercise classes, riding in their van to a local doctor, changing the sheets, all kinds of small services were charged. They counted the forks after meals to be certain that no resident had the temerity to bring in a guest without paying. No one did, but the dining room guru was convinced that people were taking food back to their rooms. He would stop a ninety year old in the hall with a cookie.

Once a year in October the out of town management would dispatch a cold-faced operative down to our little town for the yearly financial meeting. All the residents would crowd into the auditorium to hear the pronouncement. Fees were going up another five percent (one year seven!) No one objected, although there must have been some distress. That is another problem - this time to bring to the attention of relatives who may be considering this move for you.

The population is very vulnerable. If the management is not caring, it is a population ripe for exloiting. There are little ladies who are very frail, spouses in the first stages of Altzeimers, older people who just do not have the strength to fight back they once used to have. Resident opposition to the pronouncements of the owners is improbable. They are sheep waiting to be shorn. Most of all, they may need an advocate. A good one would be your children keeping an eye on things.

More to follow.

A RETIREMENT HOME MISTAKE

Everyone makes a mistake sometime. I've made quite a few and I must stop -I'm getting too old for it now.

The most recent mistake was our decision (mostly mine) that it would be a good thing to sell our house and go into one of the retirement homes. You know the kind -- where you first live in an apartment and then when you break your hip or something, you move into an area called "assisted living" . Then when even worse things happen, you move into nursing or Altzheimers parts of the buildings.

I was determined to do this, because I thought that nobody would take care of me; my husband was not well-suited for the nursing care of others, and the children were all out of town and very busy with their own lives. So we looked and looked in Oregon and Colorado, Virginia and Maryland, at church oriented homes and military havens, college towns and large cities. You can't say we didn't give it our all. Finally we picked one close to our home in a leafy college town . It was new-just under construction. The brochures showed happy smiling couples playing tennis and riding bicycles, very active and tanned. There was not a walker or a wheelchair in sight and the general impression was of a Sun City kind of life.

Now this was not cheap. All of these places wanted large sums of money to take up residency(about the amount of a small house). You had to "buy-in" and pay considerable monthly fees on top of that investment. Most of the homes provided a return of your capital investment when you died or left, but not the one we chose. The company made it very clear, the resident had no equity.

I don't think many homes do this any more. But we did it and it didn't seem strange at the time. It was just like getting into a country club with a big initiation fee. And besides there were all those laughing couples in the brochures - it should be fun. And we weren't going to leave, so what difference did it make?

When did I know that I had made a big mistake? I think it was the first week when I looked around the dining room. We were not ready for this. And where were those smiling, laughing couples? But I didn't tell the children how I felt. They were pleased we had made such a
sensible decision and they had gone to so much trouble to move us out of our house and get rid of all of our posessions. So I didn't tell them.

More to follow.

LIFE GOES TO A PARTY

I'm going to veer a little bit here-- usually I write about the difficulties and little misteps of living alone for the first time. Things you don't want to tell the children, because they might think you are deteriorating.

But there are some things that you do want to tell the children before these things get lost forever. People of your own age like to remember these things, the little pleasures of the way life used to be before e-mail and Walmart, video games and Lindsay Lohan. First you have to tell the children that there wasn't any television. At this they sort of cock their heads as if to say "Yes, I believe you but that is so bizarre I can't comprehend it."

I am beset with nostalgia now. The latest was remembering the glories of LIFE magazine. I hear that there is a version of LIFE still, but it cannot ever resemble the LIFE of the 40's . Nothing could match that. It came every week, huge and glossy with beautiful scarlet edgings, with a wonderful photo of something or someone on the cover. The kids fought over it, to see who would get it first. But LIFE was for everyone, and as the war went on the magazine was even more intriguing.

I was a typical bobby-soxer crazed by Frank Sinatra and not too serious, so I loved the more frivolous articles. My favorite was a feature titled "LIFE Goes to a Party." The editors picked a party, any party, and gave it a two or three page spread. Remember the debutantes? They were my very favorites, particularly one named Brenda Frazier. She had a sweep of dark hair, and glorious sparkling strapless dresses. I wonder whatever happened to Brenda Frazier. Does anyone know? Surely she could never get old --she's dancing somewhere.

I HATE EXERCISE CLASS

Don't you hate exercise class? How could anyone like it. At my age, I think I should have the inalienable right to loll around the house in my old bathrobe in the morning, drinking coffee and eating a bearclaw or a snack of cold pizza. Instead I have to put on exercise togs and drive to the Y, dreading every minute of it. Why do I do this? Mainly because the out of town children demand it. Even some friends who are hooked on Pilates (whatever that is) or Yoga suggest tactfully that I should keep up with this thing at the Y.

I am the oldest person in the class but that doesn't dissuade the teacher. She is an incredibly slim young thing with great dance moves and energy that just won't quit. The main movement is marching--knees up and arms swinging , just like a marching band from Music Man. This goes on for fifty minutes, with the addition of some hand weights and stretchy bands. I watch the clock on the wall, and by the time 25 minutes goes by, I am about to call it quits. But most of the time I carry on, because I've come that far in misery. When it's over, I can hardly walk and have to fall on my bed at home. How can this be good for anybody?

Sometimes I don't go, but say that I did. But DONT TELL THE CHILDREN.

IN WHICH I LEARN TO OPEN THINGS

One of the first things I have to do, now that I am living alone, is to learn how to open things. I have often thought that I could starve to death sitting in front of a pile of canned food and bottled water if the electric can opener was defunct. I love wine and am somewhat of a wine connoisseur, but I have never never been able to get that corkscrew down into the cork . Just now all my wine is sitting in the closet waiting for a guest to come, or perhaps the man who lives in the apartment upstairs. And as for those packages of batteries and pills with hard plastic coverings over the cardboard, lots of luck. One problem is that I have very little strength in my arms or hands; when you have to squeeze that rubber ball in a test of hand strength, I come in zero. The other problem is that the manufacturers of these things don't really want them to be opened.

One day, shortly after the funeral, I couldn't get a chicken noodle soup opened. It had an "easy open" tab which promptly broke off when I pulled it back. This left a little narrow crack about the size of an eyebrow. I tried to pry the noodles out of the crack but they didn't fit. The can wouldn't go in the electric can opener any more because the edge was shot. I was weepy anyway and I started to cry - I needed that chicken noodle soup. That was the end of helplessness. I decided I was going to open this stuff no matter what.

I could use some suggestions! The tools I have so far that seem to work are (1) a plastic jar and bottle opener that is about 6 inches long. open like a nutcracker, with scallops along two edges. This works for sizes up to a big pickle jar, and I take this kind of thing outside and bang it on the cement. Then (2) a box-cutter is somewhat helpful on those hard plastic coverings - the terrorists were able to kill a lot of people with box cutters so you would think it could get through that plastic. {3} a round rubber thing about 4 inches wide. I don't know why this works but it sometimes does. (4) nailscissors. Sometimes you can clip around on the cardboard backing on pill cards, etc.

As to the wine bottles, I'm still out of it. Let me know if you have any ideas. Also a hand can opener for cans that is very easy to work.