Thoughts on assisted living, aging, Dad, and guilt.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Here is the most important four-letter word in the entire English language: home. It conjures up and is connected to every element of the well-lived life: spouse, family, peace, comfort, security. Nothing can match its importance, nothing can duplicate its significance. Nothing is more powerful than our memories of home and their enduring pull, always tugging at our heart strings. Home and its rhythms, its well remembered aspects, its secrets, its traditions, its confidences, its ways so well known and carefully maintained… these have a power over us that never fails, never pales, never wavers, never diminishes, and are always clear, fresh, joyful, unforgettable, bittersweet, haunting, the sweetest memories of our entire life.
This is an article on the moment that comes to each of us… when this home, our very special, irreplaceable place, must be given up because its proprietors can no longer maintain it, now needing particular care themselves. This is an article about a moment poignant, sad, dreadful, irrevocable. It is about the people who take this step first, our parents… then about their children, us, who will trod the difficult road, too, but not yet… and what they must do today, a day of emotional turmoil, distress, a day for which all preparation is inadequate.
For this article I have selected the song “My Old Kentucky Home” (1852) by America’s first great composer, Stephen Foster. It is one of the most wistful, longing songs of our country… and whenever one hears it one thinks, and tearful too, of one’s own home, now gone, far away, never to be replaced, always to be remembered, the more so as the destination you are now going to can never be a home like the one left behind. Go now to any search engine. Find and play it at once. It is the perfect accompaniment to this article.
The call.
The call we all fear, cannot bear thinking about, but must think about — comes the day our aging parents first consider assisted living, whether outwardly calm and willing, or fighting the hopeless battle to avoid this fate, roiled by turbulent emotions deep within, so clearly visible without.
Assisted living.
The words “assisted living” are two of the most frightening and disturbing in our language. It is easy to see why. Assisted living is mostly the province of the retired, the ill, the aging, geriatric survivors of better times. As such it is a venue to be put off and avoided whenever possible, for as long as possible; as much so as if each assisted living facility had posted at its front door this immemorial admonition from Dante’s “Inferno”: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
Such institutions are perceived as the final way station before cosmic extinction; the place one enters unhappy, angry, misunderstood, and which one leaves dead; the place for the irremediably old, those who are past it, marginal, unconsidered, beyond the care and concern of anyone other than those paid to care and be concerned; lonely people of the Eleanor Rigby variety.
All of life…
Assisted living, with its implied inadequacies and dependence, is always and often indignantly compared to the joy of independent living, where you do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, in just the way you want; in other words the kind of living each of us desires, insists upon, and does everything possible to maintain. Assisted living, of course, is widely perceived as the antithesis of the desired independent living.
But this is wrong.
ALL living is assisted living. For unless you are rabidly antisocial and determined to remain that way, alone, isolated, happy and contented in your aloneness, you are assisted — every single day — by people whose aim is to make you reasonably happy, reasonably content, and reasonably comfortable. Thus, in truth, when one moves from living regarded as independent to living regarded as assisted, one is evolving from one kind of care to another kind of care; one is tweaking circumstances the better to ensure the maximum continuation of your desired life style. One is not undergoing metamorphosis, but comparative and necessary improvement.
Sadly, most people undergoing this process are unable to see this, or at least to state it to guilt-ridden relatives who are thus distressed by the painful thought that Aunt Martha is being cast off rather than moved to an appropriate level of care, concern, and consideration. Most assisted living facilities these days resemble college campuses or resorts; they know the grief, anger, recriminations and distress which new residents bring and work hard to create an atmosphere that is at once attractive, even beautiful; livable, practical, and serene, factors which soothe the guilt of those recommending assisted living to those near and dear but are often dismissed as inadequate or unimportant by those being recommended into the facility.
Receiving the intelligence.
Twice in my life, so far, have I been a participant to greater or lesser degree, in conversations surrounding the movement of one near and beloved to assisted living. The first such conversations involved my mother; the second set involved my father. These conversations could hardly have been less similar — or more instructive about the principals involved and affected.
My mother, student of Dylan Thomas that she was, did not, nor could not, go gentle into this good night. She raged, raged against what she was sure was the dying of the light. Despite weakening health and the myriad of problems stemming therefrom my mother fought hard, strenuously, vociferously, painfully against the notion of “incarceration” in an assisted living facility, thereby branded as penal institution, not comfortable necessity. Her transition from living deemed independent to living deemed assisted was therefore protracted, painful, packed with imprecations, denigrations, accusations, maledictions which made Emile Zola’s famous declaration “J’accuse” look sniveling.
My father handled the matter entirely different… and I suspect this was partly because he will have with him his wife Ellie; to be alone at life’s end is painful; to be partnered with a loved mate lessons the pain while increasing the means to combat and to live with it.
Sad, wistful, practical, accepting.
When my father called yesterday to inform me that he and Ellie had made arrangements to share their dwindling, most precious days together in assisted living, I felt a lump in my throat. He extolled the grounds, their private apartment, the food, the friendly residents… but whether he believed all this as stated or was just trying out what would become the stock reason or their move, I cannot say… for I was reflecting on a few words that he had said.
Entering the dining room where they would find their daily meals, he was surprised to find it peopled with the old, feeble, and infirm. Could this be he at 86, Ellie at 87? Or had some mistake occurred? She, knowing how difficult it had to be for him to transform his independent life to one “assisted”, took his hand and reassured him that no mistake was made; they were in the right place, which he would soon know, if he did not know already. And thus these proud, fiercely independent souls, more used to assisting others than being assisted, move into the next phase of their lives, together, facts faced, practical decisions made, gently, calmly, with love and care. And I admired my father so, not merely as son to father, but as man to man. For he faced the difficult, the fearful, the unpalatable, with grace, quietude, reserve, with good judgement, good humor, and a good wife, well stocked and ready for the journey ahead… which they will travel similarly and with kindness, above all with kindless and the help of those glad to assist them, and with kindness too.
** We invite you to post your comments to this article.

‘Darling, I am growing old, silver threads among the gold.’ Telltale signs you’re an old coot.

Author’s program note! Do you know the great Irish tenor John McCormack? If not, your grandmother surely did. “I tell you Mary Louise, he has the voice of an angel, an angel…” One of the multitude of songs he popularized and made his own was the famous tune “Silver threads among the gold”. You couldn’t listen without a tear or two dropping gently on your lap… no matter who you were or what your situation. There was that in the singer and his song that made even the most stoic lachrymose.
And so I have selected for the occasional music to this article, “Silver threads among the gold”, perhaps the most popular ballad of the period starting with its copyright in 1873 right into the 1920s. The all affecting lyrics are by Eben E. Rexford, music by Hart Pease Danks. You’ll find it in any search engine. Go now; find it; listen more than once and sniffle… because this music, these lyrics, this article are all about….. you….. the you getting older and stranger by the day…. you old coot, you.
Pity the poor coot.
I want you to know — and coot lovers worldwide demand that I tell you — the coot is an honorable, hard working, entirely meritorious fowl. It is a medium-sized water bird in good standing, well known and up-to-date in its membership in the rail family Rallidae. They constitute, and proudly too, the genus Fulica with eye-catching predominantly black plumage. They are common in South America, Europe, and North America, too.
Now hear this: they vigorously oppose the appropriation of their good name to describe eccentric or crotchety persons and are herewith filing a declaration and grievance with the United Nations. They aver and make clear: there is nothing wrong with coots in general, and old coots must be venerated, never, never derided and made the object of ridicule and derision. However some more insightful coots realize the only bad publicity is no publicity… and so these progressive birds use the expression themselves with glee and impunity.
Are you an old coot?
Consider the case of my honorable father and his telephone answering machine. Over time, this once pristine and useful device has deteriorated. First the machine lost about one in ten calls; then about one quarter of the calls went unrecorded… until now the number of lost calls and messages is hovering at a perfect 100%. It is just about impossible to leave a message for him.
When told of this situation, as he now constantly is, he says “I know. Other people tell me that.” And each and every one of these folks wishing for immediate connection with my venerable sire says the same thing: “You need a new answering machine.” But my father has a firm response based on his current age (86), likely check-out date, and a gnawing belief he will not get his full and complete money’s worth out of any new answering machine… and so the matter rests from day to day… his standing as an old coot now entirely secure and certain. What’s more, if he was to get as a gift, for Christmas say or his next birthday, a telephone answering machine, he probably could not be induced even to take it out of the box, for, after all, he didn’t really need it; his current machine, despite its foibles and idiosyncrasies is still working, never mind that it only performs its necessary function at the most intermittent of occasions.
Out of range.
The same is true with Dad’s O*Keefe and Merritt range. It’s, 25, maybe 30, years old, or even more. And whilst it is no doubt a fine company producing a fine product, this particular product has seen better days; to the extent that it cooks the food he likes hot and just so only about half way. And this, as one may well imagine, irritates the old fellow. But because he is not just an old fellow but an old coot, he is not about to let that range go; after all it still cooks about half his food reasonably well.
And so, instead of calling the Sears appliance center or other venue offering stoves at fetching prices, he called….. O*Keefe and Merritt to see if they had the part that was defective on his unit. The representative he ultimately connected with laughed aloud when he gave her the part number, “Honey, we haven’t produced that part for over 25 years.” And that should have been that… trip to oven store at once… new machine to be installed next Thursday.
But old coots don’t think that way…. no indeed.
All but useless… still good enough for coots.
If there’s a penny’s worth of value left in any object, no matter that that object can not do the job you need done, a coot, any coot, will die rather than lose that value. That’s why dear old Dad, not only did not get a new range, but told the flip wench that he would keep looking for the part until he found it. Then he called a couple of repair places to see if they could help; they couldn’t. This continued until he had the bright idea of going to Ebay, and there the matter rests because he doesn’t know how to use Ebay and daren’t ask me because he already knows what I’ll say and getting rid of the friggin’ stove is just the beginning.
I’d make him chuck the toaster that doesn’t quite toast… “but I only got it 15 years ago, and it should be good for another 5,000 pieces at least…”
The typewriter he hasn’t used, not to type a single letter or address label in a couple of decades at least… “but it’s an Olivetti, top of the line”… Then the punch line, “They discontinued this model years ago, and you can’t get ribbons anymore.” Of course.
Even the bromo seltzer in the medicine cabinet… that he picked up for “Just a penny, I tell you” at the estate sale of my great grandmother, the sale held when I was just 13 or 14 or so; (I’m 64 now). Then, in 1959, it was already over 20 years old. But she’d say when people told her to get rid of it, she’d say with horror, “Why, what an idea, Lura Marshall”… and then these unanswerable words: “You never know”… and these unanswerable words were rendered with the hauteur of a queen… or at the very least of someone who knew a great, dark, secret, like maybe it was a poison reserved for her Satanic rites. But it was worse, far worse than that.
Now I know what that secret is.
You see, that bottle of bromo seltzer arrived the other day, compliments of my father who decided he needed the space, but absolutely couldn’t throw this away. Why, it was owned by his own grandmother.
When I opened that box, I knew; I knew not only I wouldn’t… I couldn’t throw it away.
And so I came to know.. and now I tell you the secret, that .. becoming an old coot is a matter of heredity, genetics, not choice, which makes me a Young Coot.
Thus I called Poor Old Dad (it took over a dozen attempts to reach him on his wonky answering machine) and promised I’ll find him that part if it takes a year, or more; he’s right, that range is far too valuable to discard, and new ones cost the earth.
You don’t have to have silver threads among the gold to know that, although I most surely do. Why if I find that part, and I shall, that range has at least 20 good years left…. Dad says he’s leaving it to me…
*** Your comments on this article are invited.