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.