And the damage deposit will never be refunded

My mother, now age 80, has been living near me for the past 3 months. In that time, she has had two emergency room visits, a hospital visit, and she has been in a skilled nursing facility for about 6 weeks now.

She has been away from her apartment longer than she has lived in it since she moved here.

She is due to be discharged from the SNF next week. The decision now has to be made-can she continue to live on her own in her apartment, or should she be moved into an assisted living apartment.

For those of you who are not familiar with all of these options (as I certainly was not just a mere 6 weeks ago), each option has a different level of supervision- and cost. The skilled nursing is a nursing home. It is usually a transition to going home from the hospital or to decide if you can ever go home. The assisted living is an apartment which has extra services, such as housekeeping, meals, and activities. The senior apartment where she was living had one meal each day which she could choose whether or not to eat.

Next week we will be moving her into an assisted living apartment. The building for this apartment is attached to her current senior apartment building, so it is a matter of moving her belongings from one apartment to the other.

But the new apartment is much smaller. We will have to make a lot of decisions about which of her belongings should go to the new apartment and which should be discarded or sold, or perhaps handed down to grandchildren.

Here is the lesson that I have learned from this entire experience:

-Your world gets smaller as you age.

Your living quarters are reduced with each move: house to townhouse, townhouse to apartment, apartment to senior living, senior living to assisted living.

Getting old is a matter of the ground sucking you in, slowly but surely, picking up speed as you get closer until finally you are in a coffin, in the ground.

 

 

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