My mother: there’s bad news and there’s good news
Those of you who’ve followed the continuing saga of my 93-year old mother (yes, she just had a birthday) know that she moved back to NY in mid-November. So, how’s it going so far?
Well, she hates it.
But she’s happy.
And if that seems to be a contradiction–I think I can explain.
My mother complains about the place she lives in. Not her room; that, she admits, is beautiful–high-ceilinged and airy and light and…well, roomy. The bathroom, likewise, and the little kitchenette. No, the physical plant leaves little to be desired.
Her assistants (after all, it is “assisted living”) come more or less at their appointed hours, to help her with dressing and getting downstairs and the like. Since her stroke she’d gotten used to having personal caretakers around for about nine hours a day, more or less at her service, and now they come and go only as needed or as called, so I was a bit worried about the change.
But it doesn’t seem to be a problem. Actually, she appears to welcome the return of a certain amount of privacy, an unexpected benefit.
So, what is the problem? Two, actually, but they’re biggish ones. The first is that she doesn’t like any of her fellow residents. What this represents I’m not sure. But I think it’s the fact that my mother’s mind is (knock wood) basically sound, and most of the others are more–as they say–“cognitively challenged.”
And she hates the food. Hates, hates, hates it.
Now, food is an important part of life for most of us, although I hear tell of people who eat to live and don’t really enjoy the process all that much. But for the elderly in institutions–even ones as beautiful as my mother’s–food assumes an even greater importance in the hierarchy of events than it does for most people. That is to say, mealtimes are a big, big, very big deal.
So if she doesn’t like the food, and she doesn’t like the company that goes with it, and she doesn’t like the activities (too elementary, designed to suit the diminished capacity of so many of the residents)–then Houston, we’ve got a problem.
Except that we don’t, exactly. When I speak to her on the phone, her voice sounds more happy and relaxed than it has in years, with a lilt I haven’t heard in a long while. Even her memory–not all that bad to begin with–has improved. She sounds sharper in general.
Reading between the lines, I ascribe her improved mood to the phenomenon I wrote about here: the fact that she’s home.
No, it’s not her old home. But it’s “home” as a community, the place where she grew up, the area she lived in for eighty-eight years before moving to New England to be near me.
And that community–at least so far–has come through for her. She’s had lots of visitors (some of them bring the chocolate to which she’s become allergic, forcing my brother to confiscate it and take it home with him, poor thing). She’s had many more phone calls. She’s been out to restaurants–and, what’s more, they’re not just random restaurants, they’re places she knows and loves, with a long and deep history in her life.
Her room looks out over a highway, not the beautiful trees of her previous place, trees that changed with the dramatic New England seasons and offered the spectacle of nature’s wonder through her many windows. But my mom’s a city gal. Although she appreciated those trees and often remarked on them, now she monitors and reports on the changing traffic and seems happy to do so.
Proving that, in the words of the cliché and Dorothy: there’s no place like home– although the definition of “home” isn’t always what you think it will be.
so true, be it ever so humble there is no place like home.
Your mother sounds like a lovely person, but someone who can at times be a handful. Yes, there is no place like home; it makes up for a lot of deficiencies in other realms.
I have one idea regarding the food complaint–by prior arrangement with the assisted-living residence, might not your mother be allowed to opt out of some of her regular meals there and have an occasional meal (take-out, say 3 or 4 times a week, delivered according to either an established schedule or by phone call) from local area restaurants? Her assisted-living food service charges would be lowered accordingly on a monthly basis. This arrangement would provide your mother with an occasional change of pace and food that presumably meets her standards. It might also be easier for her to stomach the institutional slop knowing that a decent, tasty meal will be coming soon.
I presume that your mother would eat in her room during those meals for which she opts out, which if she “hates” the other residents would also provide a welcome respite for her.
I’ve tried to find ‘home’ for 23 years..it no longer exists. But that doesn’t keep me from wishful thinking.
At some point, I realized I’ve just have to make the best of what I’ve got.
I’m glad your mother is happier now.
I have seen the contradiction first hand myself, and can understand that she both hates it and is happy at the same time. My father moved in with me a few years ago and acts like he wishes he could be any where else on the planet. He is happy because he was in a nursing home and most of the people in the nursing home were of “diminished capacity”, while he was out back smoking cigarettes with the nursing staff. Now he has his own space, he get the chance to go on cruises when ever he wants, and does not worry about a house or bills. He has gotten healthier since he moved in with me and for some reason has grown to like cats. My teenage daughter finds the situation confusing.
The best to you and your mother.
For most people, happiness is determined by how much control they feel they have over events in their lives. When we’re young, we may be poorly paid, reckless and kind of incompetent, but we do feel like we have the power to change and improve our lives.
When you’re very old, that feeling of having control over your life is harder to get. I’d guess that that’s why, even though they’re comfortable, retired, older people have a harder time feeling happy.
It does seem true that, for elderly people in assisted living, a lot of what they seem to want (or say they want) sounds contradictory to the rest of us.
Frankly, I see it as complaining about the symptoms (I hate the food, I hate the people, etc.), instead of complaining about the causes — because she knows that the causes that really bother her can’t be fixed. What she really wants, in my opinion, is to be well again, to be in control again, to be able to take command herself of the little things that annoy her. She can’t do that, so she kvetches about those little things instead.
At least, that’s my take on things. I am not a psychologist, and my opinion is worth exactly what you just paid for it.
For the record, though, my family and I used to take out our family matriarch regularly — going for lunch outings was a fun thing for her, until she became too frail to deal with it. If your family is doing that, Neo, I think she’ll cope fine, because it’ll solve both problems at once.
My best wishes to you and your family. I hope your mom continues to do well for a good, long time to come.
respectfully,
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