The Retirement Home

I once, many many many years ago, made the comment that people over 60 and under three were difficult to train. It was intended to be a joke as an over 60 friend of mine would not stop giving my dog treats...this was at the same gathering I was trying to get a toddler to stop giving my dog treats.

Needless to say the dog was quite happy and I've yet to have my statement proven false.

Right before we left for Europe in October, like three days before, an elderly friend of mine who is over 80 told me she would be moving up the date to go into assisted living from February the next year to possibly the beginning of October...when I would be out of the country.

The original plan was for me to spend a couple of weeks with her before her move to help finalize the items going, walk through the house where she'd lived in for more than 20 years to ensure nothing was missed and to be general support.

The best laid plans...were not to be for me this fall for several reasons, this was just one of them. I told her if she chose (and her move in date was actually her choice) to relocate while I was on vacation, I wouldn't be able to help her and my coming over afterwards would not be of much use either.

After more hemming, hawing, and conversation than really should have been necessary, she agreed not to move until I returned.

I should have been more precise in my statements.

Sunday morning, the day after we returned and had sent our child and her girlfriend home so we could make the trek to Sedona (nine hours of driving across the barren wasteland that lies between Moab and Sedona) I received a broken phone call, traveling through an area with little to no cell reception has that effect.

Unable to understand what my friend was trying to tell me I had to wait until evening to call her back. Trying not to worry since I didn't know if there was a medical issue in play or not.

She had indeed waited until I returned to move into the retirement home, she was moving in the following Monday.

Mind you, we had just returned from spending a week eight hours ahead of our normal time zone. The trip back had taken more than 20 hours total. We just spent all day packing up, traveling, unpacking. Two days later I was on a red eye flight to Atlanta from Phoenix, arriving at six in the morning with no sleep since the previous morning and had to start work for my job at nine.

Love makes you do crazy things.

Moving a person from a 2500+ square foot house into 200 sq feet is a job. Fortunately, all we had to worry about were the items she was taking with her, everything would be taken care of by someone else. If you think this made it easier, it did on the physical and time consuming level but my real job was not easy.

I sat up late at night with her and listened to the stories behind several thousand photographs as she picked out the ones I would scan and put into her digital photo frame (514 photos and an entire day sitting with the scanner).

I helped label dozens of shoes and a walk-in closet full of cloths (requirement of the home). We walked around the house trying to decide if she would have enough wall space for the paintings of her beloved (and long departed) cats and more recently deceased husband of 40 years.

I held her hand as the vet put down her cat of 22 years and she fretted over only being able to take two of her six remaining ones, all of who she'd raised from just a few weeks old. The youngest was now 15 years of age.

There was a fair amount of muttering as she moved around the house followed by "oh well." A great deal of stubbornness regarding times and days and what could be moved when. So much conversation...about the past, the present, the future. The history of different items in the house. Her childhood. The house itself (I was around when it was built). The love / hate relationship that developed from taking care of her husband when Alzheimer's had taken control and turned him into an angry human being.

I've moved more times than I care to remember in my lifetime. I've helped my kids move houses several times. This was the second most difficult move I've ever been a part of.

As my friend tells me "getting old ain't for sissies." Helping the old isn't either.