We shouldn’t lie, even to ourselves

Oh, to be 60 again and pleading with our 90-year-old mother to consider assisted living. The ‘our’ references my two brothers and me. Pat died two months ago of liver cancer; Peter is in palliative care.

Nothing stays the same. Nothing.

Except, well, except the desire by aging persons to stay in their own home. Thus, the title and image. Put another way, history often repeats itself.

There are two senior complexes in our northeast Iowa community. This is one.

And the other.

I waited for a cloudy day to take the pictures.

Foreshadowing.

Both offer the full range of services, from independent living to memory care. We have friends who are from a half to a full decade older than us in both places. One just moved from independent to assisted living. Another into nursing care, after giving up driving last year. He had lost his peripheral vision.

I’m 76, and my partner, Rebecca, is 74.

This is our senior redoubt. It has everything we need on the ground floor.

You can see the garage in the back, with one slot for each of our cars.

We know our body and mind clocks are ticking. Three days ago, we raked the leaves from our eight trees. Two days ago, we trimmed back the garden growth you see around the front porch. Yesterday, we put away the porch furniture.

We used to do all three tasks one after the other.

Now, we work on one in the morning and nap after lunch.

We have a friend, Jon, who is a little younger and in good health, as far as we know, who sold his house and moved into a condo unit on one of the senior campuses. He didn’t want to be a bother to his brothers when he could no longer care for himself, so he’s taken the first step into the assembly line of services.

For almost two decades, I’ve told myself I will not be like my mother, who, psychologically, chained herself to her home until her sons had no choice, as she had started wandering outside at night.

As I sit here writing this story, in the comfort of my home, I worry that I will be just as vulnerable as she was to not accepting that my aging body and mind have placed me in a region where I need help.

My kindergarten teacher said we shouldn’t lie, even to ourselves, especially when it’s so easy to do.

She was right.

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