by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Here is the most important four-letter word in
the entire English language: home. It conjures up and is connected to
every element of the well-lived life: spouse, family, peace, comfort,
security. Nothing can match its importance, nothing can duplicate its
significance. Nothing is more powerful than our memories of home and
their enduring pull, always tugging at our heart strings. Home and its
rhythms, its well remembered aspects, its secrets, its traditions, its
confidences, its ways so well known and carefully maintained… these have
a power over us that never fails, never pales, never wavers, never
diminishes, and are always clear, fresh, joyful, unforgettable,
bittersweet, haunting, the sweetest memories of our entire life.
This is an article on the moment that comes to each of us… when this
home, our very special, irreplaceable place, must be given up because
its proprietors can no longer maintain it, now needing particular care
themselves. This is an article about a moment poignant, sad, dreadful,
irrevocable. It is about the people who take this step first, our
parents… then about their children, us, who will trod the difficult
road, too, but not yet… and what they must do today, a day of emotional
turmoil, distress, a day for which all preparation is inadequate.
For this article I have selected the song “My Old Kentucky Home”
(1852) by America’s first great composer, Stephen Foster. It is one of
the most wistful, longing songs of our country… and whenever one hears
it one thinks, and tearful too, of one’s own home, now gone, far away,
never to be replaced, always to be remembered, the more so as the
destination you are now going to can never be a home like the one left
behind. Go now to any search engine. Find and play it at once. It is the
perfect accompaniment to this article.
The call.
The call we all fear, cannot bear thinking about, but must think
about — comes the day our aging parents first consider assisted living,
whether outwardly calm and willing, or fighting the hopeless battle to
avoid this fate, roiled by turbulent emotions deep within, so clearly
visible without.
Assisted living.
The words “assisted living” are two of the most frightening and
disturbing in our language. It is easy to see why. Assisted living is
mostly the province of the retired, the ill, the aging, geriatric
survivors of better times. As such it is a venue to be put off and
avoided whenever possible, for as long as possible; as much so as if
each assisted living facility had posted at its front door this
immemorial admonition from Dante’s “Inferno”: “Abandon all hope ye who
enter here.”
Such institutions are perceived as the final way station before
cosmic extinction; the place one enters unhappy, angry, misunderstood,
and which one leaves dead; the place for the irremediably old, those who
are past it, marginal, unconsidered, beyond the care and concern of
anyone other than those paid to care and be concerned; lonely people of
the Eleanor Rigby variety.
All of life…
Assisted living, with its implied inadequacies and dependence, is
always and often indignantly compared to the joy of independent living,
where you do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, in just
the way you want; in other words the kind of living each of us desires,
insists upon, and does everything possible to maintain. Assisted living,
of course, is widely perceived as the antithesis of the desired
independent living.
But this is wrong.
ALL living is assisted living. For unless you are rabidly antisocial
and determined to remain that way, alone, isolated, happy and contented
in your aloneness, you are assisted — every single day — by people whose
aim is to make you reasonably happy, reasonably content, and reasonably
comfortable. Thus, in truth, when one moves from living regarded as
independent to living regarded as assisted, one is evolving from one
kind of care to another kind of care; one is tweaking circumstances the
better to ensure the maximum continuation of your desired life style.
One is not undergoing metamorphosis, but comparative and necessary
improvement.
Sadly, most people undergoing this process are unable to see this, or
at least to state it to guilt-ridden relatives who are thus distressed
by the painful thought that Aunt Martha is being cast off rather than
moved to an appropriate level of care, concern, and consideration. Most
assisted living facilities these days resemble college campuses or
resorts; they know the grief, anger, recriminations and distress which
new residents bring and work hard to create an atmosphere that is at
once attractive, even beautiful; livable, practical, and serene, factors
which soothe the guilt of those recommending assisted living to those
near and dear but are often dismissed as inadequate or unimportant by
those being recommended into the facility.
Receiving the intelligence.
Twice in my life, so far, have I been a participant to greater or
lesser degree, in conversations surrounding the movement of one near and
beloved to assisted living. The first such conversations involved my
mother; the second set involved my father. These conversations could
hardly have been less similar — or more instructive about the principals
involved and affected.
My mother, student of Dylan Thomas that she was, did not, nor could
not, go gentle into this good night. She raged, raged against what she
was sure was the dying of the light. Despite weakening health and the
myriad of problems stemming therefrom my mother fought hard,
strenuously, vociferously, painfully against the notion of
“incarceration” in an assisted living facility, thereby branded as penal
institution, not comfortable necessity. Her transition from living
deemed independent to living deemed assisted was therefore protracted,
painful, packed with imprecations, denigrations, accusations,
maledictions which made Emile Zola’s famous declaration “J’accuse” look
sniveling.
My father handled the matter entirely different… and I suspect this
was partly because he will have with him his wife Ellie; to be alone at
life’s end is painful; to be partnered with a loved mate lessons the
pain while increasing the means to combat and to live with it.
Sad, wistful, practical, accepting.
When my father called yesterday to inform me that he and Ellie had
made arrangements to share their dwindling, most precious days together
in assisted living, I felt a lump in my throat. He extolled the grounds,
their private apartment, the food, the friendly residents… but whether
he believed all this as stated or was just trying out what would become
the stock reason or their move, I cannot say… for I was reflecting on a
few words that he had said.
Entering the dining room where they would find their daily meals, he
was surprised to find it peopled with the old, feeble, and infirm. Could
this be he at 86, Ellie at 87? Or had some mistake occurred? She,
knowing how difficult it had to be for him to transform his independent
life to one “assisted”, took his hand and reassured him that no mistake
was made; they were in the right place, which he would soon know, if he
did not know already. And thus these proud, fiercely independent souls,
more used to assisting others than being assisted, move into the next
phase of their lives, together, facts faced, practical decisions made,
gently, calmly, with love and care. And I admired my father so, not
merely as son to father, but as man to man. For he faced the difficult,
the fearful, the unpalatable, with grace, quietude, reserve, with good
judgement, good humor, and a good wife, well stocked and ready for the
journey ahead… which they will travel similarly and with kindness, above
all with kindless and the help of those glad to assist them, and with
kindness too.
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