Walk into one of those churches on a typical Sunday morning, and you will find only a few, startling islands of brown or blond hair amid a sea of gray. Almost 20 percent of the population is over the age of 65.
[snip]
The former Midlakes Middle School, which sits in neighboring Phelps, has transmogrified into “Vienna Gardens,” a private independent-living facility where my grandmother now lives. The bones of the schoolhouse are still clearly visible under the carpet and overstuffed couches that line the halls; the residents take their meals in the cavernous former gymnasium.
source:
No Country for Old Men
by Megan McArdle
"The Baby Boomers’ retirement will change the texture of society in ways we’ve scarcely begun to contemplate. A dispatch from America’s coming silver age."
Clearly we need a living will-type document people can use to inform their adult children they do not wish to live in a former middle school no matter how demented they may be.
I'm finding (with my mother-in-law) that you have to prepare for two stages when retiring. The first is when you retire, and the second is what happens (much?) later on. People retire so early that their retirement house or arrangement is based on the needs of a fit person. This doesn't last forever. The most obvious later need is single floor living.
ReplyDeleteMy mother-in-law is now in her retirement house (of the last 30 years!) that has become too large and costly, considering her fixed income. Although she is not demented, she is psychologically incapable of making a change to any other living situation. (Actually, we've been trying for 15 years.) In her mind, she can't stay and she can't leave, and now, she has gotten to the age when it's too late. Even if she could afford it, she wouldn't want to go to an assisted living situation. So now, we (old) kids wait until somthing forces change and the options will be worse.
As the book says, old age is not for sissies. Don't leave it up to your kids.
Unfortunately, in many places planning for that later stage can come down to a choice between lousy and lousier, and many old people know this from their own experience helping their older family members.
ReplyDeleteEveryone gets their money and then some, one way or another. Nursing homes/assisted living situations can rip through years of savings in no time. I just went through all of this over the last few years and it was a true nightmare.
SusanS
I know a woman who lives in an old school building that was built ca. 1920. I've been to her place, and I really like it. It's a spacious two-story house-like building with the original floors. Yeah, it's kinda rustic, but in a homey kind of way. When she bought it 16 years ago, the area was mostly industrial and/or abandoned vacant land. Unfortunately for her, that part of town has been discovered by the developers of ticky-tacky-McTownhouses, so her assessed property value has tripled in the last three years.
ReplyDeleteI would love to have such a place, but I can't imagine living in any school building built since 1950 or so.
Although she is not demented, she is psychologically incapable of making a change to any other living situation. (Actually, we've been trying for 15 years.) In her mind, she can't stay and she can't leave, and now, she has gotten to the age when it's too late.
ReplyDeleteRight.
Now imagine your mother-in-law in the immediate aftermath of the Northridge earthquake.
That was one of the things that made me decide to leave L.A. A friend of ours had elderly parents who became utterly paralyzed by the quake
Me, too, for about 3 hours after it happened. Ed, on the other hand, was activated - went running around the neighborhood rescuing old ladies in the middle of the night.
(In my defense I will say that I was newly and fragilely pregnant after years of infertility AND I had a severely autistic 7 year old to deal with.)
Anyway, this elderly couple was paralyzed. Their apartment was trashed, but they couldn't pick things up, couldn't let their son pick things up, couldn't walk out the door, couldn't go to a motel,...they just couldn't move.
I'll dig out my earthquake pictures and post sometime. The word "trashed," after a major earthquake, means there isn't so much as an inch of open floor space anywhere in your house AND all the salad dressing, wine, and Ragu sauce that used to live inside jars in your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets now lives on your kitchen floor along with the shards of your wedding china that you bought in France when the exchange rate was good, etc.
The image of that elderly couple unable to move really hit me. I could see myself years hence standing helplessly in the ruins of my home, trying to figure out what to do about my equally helpless grown autistic son.
I didn't want to be old and living through the Big One.
People called the Northridge earthquake the Medium One.
ReplyDeleteI'm finding (with my mother-in-law) that you have to prepare for two stages when retiring. The first is when you retire, and the second is what happens (much?) later on. People retire so early that their retirement house or arrangement is based on the needs of a fit person. This doesn't last forever. The most obvious later need is single floor living.
ReplyDeleteMy Gran has taken your advised approach.
She choose to sell her farm and move to the city while she still had no problems driving distances in the country. As part of her move to the city she built a new house. It was two stories but she set it up so she could live entirely on the ground floor if she wanted, in a wheelchair. She had the ground floor bathroom was built to handle a wheelchair or a zimmerframe. Which was very useful when she had her first hip operation.
Then when most of her children moved down south she decided to move down to be closer, so she moved into a retirement village she picked out over several visits. And once she moved down she picked out the nursing home she wanted to move into in the future. Which she is now thinking about as her health has deteroriated more. We will have to see how smoothly that move goes, but so far the whole family has been spared the sort of dramas my friends' families are going through. Though admittedly that is partly because my family history looks like it was written as a morality tale by an anti-smoking zealot, so only Gran is still alive to deal with aging.
Wow.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed by your Gran.
Good for her.