moving elderly parents

Call Me Dad. I’ll Pick Up.

Too much time has passed since I last calibrated my thoughts in a blog post – strange reflective time. In my last Text Me, Love Mom column I wrote about moving my dear old dad – the best dad – to a new senior’s residence, as he needed a higher level of physical care. It was a good move. That facility was friendly and kind, trying to cautiously give the residents as much comfort from visitors as they could within the bounds of Covid restrictions. (People talk about caring for our most vulnerable, but I think we need discussions that include listening to their own wise self-determination.)

When Covid first reared its despicable head the senior’s residence where my dad lived then went into full frightened lockdown. He had a small apartment there and was considered only in need of ‘assisted care’ because he’d originally moved in with my mom – his most loving caregiver, but she’d died nine months previous. His immune system was mighty in that he was never ill but his body was frail and worn out, his lungs needed to be on oxygen, his heart on medication, he was unstable on his feet even with a walker, and his short term memory was gone. Yet he had a robust will to live, to be social, to share what was on his mind, to be part of our lives.

My dad, Thomas Allan, was one of seven children – six boys and the sister they adored. More than once I tried to get him to tell me how nine people were able to find space to sleep in their tiny two bedroom house in Black Diamond, Alberta. The answer was always murky. They managed. The first ones in got the bed. He’d talk instead of the family dog, Purp, of hitching rides to the nearest town with a train station to jump on top of a train for a short prohibited ride to the next stop, or of making a raft that broke apart on its first Sheep River voyage, and of being known around town as one of the Allan boys. I remember at an embarrassingly late age being taught by a new sister-in-law that we shouldn’t start to eat until our mom, the cook, sat down. I think both my parents, but especially my dad, came from families where your instinct was to dig in to get enough grub while sitting around a table with nine hungry boisterously talking family members.

               In those first three months of Covid where we washed our groceries, debated masks, and stockpiled canned goods, the assisted living facility shut us out, kept residence in their rooms, and brought them meals on paper plates to eat all lone. My siblings and I made deals with ourselves, if it goes on two more weeks we’ll get him out. Two would become three … but we couldn’t decide what ‘out’ would be. To live with one of us? All without main floor bedrooms. None of us with medical backgrounds. To rent a place more suited to his walker and oxygen and poor mobility, and hire nurses? My dad would say he was a social democrat, but he never ever could get his mind around his complete loss of control in the exercise of ‘being saved’ from Covid. “What have I done wrong?” he would ask me over the phone. “Tell me, Candy, what did I do?” He was breaking our hearts.

That harsh lockdown period lasted too long but we finally argued our own and a dear loving companion’s way in, as what the authorities called essential visitors and witnessed how Dad had lost ten pounds, not from illness but from loneliness. We could finally ease up on the detailed phone call schedule us siblings and his grandchildren had adhered to, and return to bringing him our love in person. Some of our best afternoons after that were slow chats in his room. It didn’t matter that he nodded off continuously – when he woke it was with a sense of calm to see someone there, rather than a panic of where was he and why was he alone? (My humble opinion? Billions have been spent and livelihoods destroyed in failed efforts to contain the virus. Almost 90 per cent of the deaths have been in Long Term Care facilities. What if the billions were spent instead in isolating the sick from the healthy even in LTC?).

On a rainy fall afternoon encouraging him to eat the lemon pie I’d brought, I pretended to need to know how he met our mom again. “At a house party,” he said. “People used to have more of those back then.” I asked if he’d arranged a second date that night, to a movie, or dinner? “I don’t know,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”  In fact he did know, though he told me just this, ”I drove her home to her aunt’s house.” He paused, pushed the pie away. “She captured me,” he said and closed his eyes to sleep again.

I now have in my dresser drawer the bundle of love letters my parents exchanged during the first months when they lived four hours apart. In one he wrote, “I’m sure glad the search is over. It was getting hard on the eyes hunting for you for twenty-four years.” Mom, less the romantic – someone had to be practical – had written in her beautiful script about getting her hair chopped off much too short. He addressed his next few letters to ‘Chop-chop’. Known for his wry humour my dad wanted always to give someone else a smile, though he kept a straight face before and after.  

It’s supposed to be good luck to have rain on your wedding day. The rain was torrential on that June day in 1953 when Tom and Vera promised to love each other to death due us part. In the next ten years they brought five kids into the world, making seven of us at the dinner table, or sleeping in a crowded tent trailer on vacation, and riding out in a big wood panelled station wagon to visit our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Black Diamond. In his ninety-fourth year my dad wanted us to plan a family reunion with our big Allan family – imagining us all leaning into each other around a prairie campsite but Covid forbid it.

My dad’s favourite pastime was the circle drive through the foothills landscape he was passionate about. He used to do it with my mom on a Sunday afternoon, stopping for an eggroll in Turner Valley, or a burger in the Diamond, maybe just an ice cream sundae and coffee in Okotoks, before heading home. For the past few years one of us kids would be at the wheel driving Mom and Dad, and then just Dad. Sharing his affection for that small journey, our hearts would lift as we faced the Rockies and we’d make small talk about the measure of snow capping the steel grey mountains, as we as we gave him what he felt was freedom. It became too much effort for him to get out of the car but we’d park and bring him back a treat to eat with the view of the Sheep River – before returning to the city where we’d mask up again to get him and his walker and oxygen back into the tall building he resided in.

Short term memory loss is a bugger. He’d call many, many, many times a day. Sometimes I couldn’t bear to tell him that I’d just left him. Or that it was bedtime for him and me both and I wasn’t going to go there. He’d always ask us to, “Drop by with a latte.” We were both happiest when I could say, I’m on my way and I’ll stop at a coffee shop.

Why a latte? My dad was a Black Diamond boy, who before he gave up his licence at age 86 would drive forty-five minutes to another town to have coffee with his brothers. Coffee was their communion.  But a latte was something that we had to bring to him. A coffee he could get from a caregiver where he resided. Really he was saying, Come over. Bring love.

I wish he would call me now. I wish I could bring him another cup of love. I long for one more circle drive.

My dad died on November 29th, 2020. He died in his sleep. I thank God for that, because it meant he didn’t leave this earth waiting for us to pick up the phone, to bring the latte or take him for a drive. His heart quit beating as he rested. When I arrived before sunup to kiss his head good-bye I longed to tell him that when I stepped from my car I heard coyotes howling at the fading moon. I wanted to tell him that there must have been meaning in that.

John Steinbeck was one of my dad’s favourite authors. Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, “All great and precious things are lonely.” My dad was precious. I wish that he had never been lonely.

Your Hand In Mine

July 19 2020

Rules. Rules. Rules. We recently needed to move our dad to a senior’s facility with a higher level of care for him. With Covid there are rules, so many rules. Even coming from one residence with no covid to another without the virus, and having had several tests himself – he still had to be isolated in his room for fourteen days. I had to believe that when that non-isolation isolation (we were thankfully still allowed to visit) would be over Dad truly would be in a good place. He’s now on a memory care ward but please please don’t jump to conclusions! Don’t sigh and say dismissively, “Oh, okay, that’s that then.” My dad has dementia – but I know this about the ‘D word’ – you can’t decide what that means for him in particular, or compare it to someone else you know. Yesterday I listened to a poignant podcast about an elderly woman with dementia, and how she told a daughter she didn’t initially recognize, “This is who I am now. Accept this version of myself. Know I love you still.”

In the years since my dad’s had dementia I’ve made irratic frustrated attempts to learn more about the disease, and what I’ve learned most from that is that the way a person’s mind leads them down the path of dementia is unique for every soul. My family has had to learn what sometimes frightening path my dad’s mind has taken him along, as well as all the ways he is wonderfully still the same.

The kind doctor that first diagnosed him told him, Dementia doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It just means your memory isn’t working the way it did before.

My dad is still my dad. He is still honest and good, (though sometimes cranky), with charming wry humour. ‘How long have you been on oxygen?’ – a doctor recently asked. “Same as you,” he said, “since I was born.” And when I try to cool off his hot apartment, instead of telling me he is cold, he asks me if I can find him an ice pick. A nurse brings him his medication and he offers to split it with her.

That humour is evidence of a sharp funny mind. But the same mind doesn’t see the boundaries of his own changed body. Why can’t he get his drivers license back?, he wonders despite being on oxygen, and off-balance even with a walker. It’s on his bucket list to ride a horse again, he tells me and he’d like to get a two bedroom house with a stove to have people over and cook say, a few eggs.

People warn us how sad it will be when he doesn’t recognize us. I can’t predict, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. He knows exactly who his five children are, not always where we live now, but who we are is locked in. He doesn’t know he’s called one of us a dozen times in half an hour. Or that he asked us what time we’ll arrive two minutes ago, or he already called to say Happy Birthday to the brother whose birthday he amazingly remembers. Still if we can get the conversation past why he can’t move into his own place, and honestly sometimes we can’t, we can still engage in conversations about the times that as he says, were a life time ago.

My parents marriage was the union of two people who believed not just til death do us part, but in loving each other completely until then. Their strengths shone through their union but for the last four years our mom had to assume care for the husband who had previously done the heavy lifting for her. Fourteen months ago mom confided to me, “Dads worried about what will happen to him if something happens to me.” I tried to be funny, ‘We are too Mom, so you better stick around.” A month latter, the day after their 66th wedding anniversary, to our childish surprise – she unexpectedly died.

He managed in the assisted living facility we’d helped them choose for a year without her – his guiding light. He’s frail, and weak of body, but not of mind in the way too many think. Yes, he has dementia but he can tell a good story, and set you to laughing with his wit.

Funny what memories we hold onto. Being the middle of five kids it would have been rare to have my dad’s attention all to myself. But I remember going to a department store once – just him and I. I have a vivid memory of how before entering the big store he took my small hand in his big strong one. I honestly remember being so happy to have my dad, holding my hand, just the two of us out together.

What I wish I’d told my mom that day fourteen months ago when she, I realized, was the one worried about him managing without her, was this, “It would be ok Mom. We’ll take care of him.” What I didn’t know as a kid was that my turn to take his hand and make him feel safe would come. It’s not easy to do that always, but listen hard Dad – we’re trying.

It’ll Be Okay, Mom – Fingers Crossed

It’s a different sort of summer. For months (years) we’ve been encouraging (harassing) my parents to change their living situation. I sugar coat all the words to make the struggle easier. And I can’t stop myself from thinking about myself and my husband, and our same age peers – what living situation will we choose in our ‘golden years’?

Without doubt we will all want to stay in the houses that we’ve renovated and refitted with carefully chosen granite and then more fashionable quartz , where we’ve taken down walls making great rooms as great rooms became the fashion. But when the time comes, as it has for my mom and dad, when that big yard, the staircases, even the meal preparation and bringing in food, has just become too much – where will we land?

It’s taken a while for my four siblings and I to all be on the same page agreeing that, as proud as we may be that these people that raised us have managed to keep their own household going for all these years, (65 years in fact) but now it’s time for them to have an easier life. My dad has various health issues now and simply put – they need a supported living situation.

I could write a book on the journey involved in searching out the right – what I call – ‘retirement residence’. I call it that because it sounds nice and (fingers crossed) hopefully it will be. My parents will have their own apartment- we are not talking about a nursing home or the dreaded ‘long-term care facility’ that one might need some day. They’ll have a bedroom, living room ‘kitchen area’ and the oversized bathroom these places feature.

It was that tiny kitchen that we all wished was something more. They’ll have room to bring the dining room table we’ve told our stories around, but there are just a very few cupboards. Where to put the platter that’s held the turkey for decades of Christmas’s , or the collection of vases from years of bouquets, what about the big bowl for popcorn with a movie on tv, or the big lemonade pitcher for drinks when family arrive with thirsty little ones?

Because of that tiny kitchen ‘spot’ we took my mom and dad to view a higher end retirement residence this week. No question that it was attractive and, despite it not being necessary – with three meals provided in the first floor dining room- it featured an actual kitchen, complete with full fridge and dishwasher. This brand new building, with residents moving in for the very first time was lovely, but when we returned to the place more comfortably within their budget we saw folks already friendly with each other chatting on a Sunday afternoon outside, and in the dining room an elderly woman was playing the piano loudly and with spirit, for whoever cared to listen.

We went up to take measurements to see if perhaps the china cabinet might fit, to hold special treasures and more practical items (it will) and I stared down the mini fridge.

I know my parents will only need to keep a quart of milk, or a few refreshments for when they don’t want to walk down the hall to the ‘bistro room’ that is always open, but it is the idea, that after a lifetime of taking care of themselves they don’t need their own butter or mayonnaise or a dozen eggs, that is bothering me.

That will be okay, mom, I think. We’ll go out to shop for what makes you happy in that puny fridge. In the next few weeks we’ll get busy choosing how to make this home. We’re putting our trust in the good we see here – the supportive kind staff we’ve met, the opportunities to socialize with your peers around new tables, and that wonderful woman playing the piano.

……To read about another sort of leaving home click here for My book Text Me, Love Mom on Amazon