Roses in January — The Aging Adventure

RETIREMENT HOME   (Part 2)  Our neighborhood is not exactly “cozy.”  We’re of different ages, incomes, retired, employed, with children, grown children, no children married, divorced, gay, straight, with pets or without (one couple has three egg-laying chickens), politically progressive or conservative.  One widower has lived here since the 1940’s; we’ve lived here 24 years.  Most have moved in since.  Everyone is busy.  In short, we’re a cross section of America.  I don’t know everyone in our immediate neighborhood but, as Block Watch Captain, I’ve gotten to know most and most know me.  The Rose Man is known, of course, by his roses. 

We’ve bonded together over Disaster Preparedness and Crime Prevention.  Twice a year we socialize as a group with a Labor Day Alley Party and a Cinco de Mayo party in May.  We see more of one another in the summer when we’re outside or in passing, waving to each other from the car.  Not everyone in the neighborhood participates — keeping to themselves.

I’ve shared the dilemma of moving into a retirement home with friends and family and expressed my belief, based on my experience working in a retirement home, that in a community disaster I could trust my neighbors to assist us before trusting that employees of a retirement home who are paid little above minimum wage to leave their families and risk their lives to see to my welfare.

One of the neighbors I shared with discussed the issue with other neighbors and they presented us with another option based on the Village to Village movement.  Saying that they don’t want us to move, our neighbors have volunteered to take care of the yard and other needs requiring assistance.

My heart overflows with love and gratitude.

Roses in January — the Aging Adventure

A while back the Rose Man startled me with an out-of-the-blue announcement that we should sell our house and move into a retirement home.  What?  Was he serious?  He was.  I was equally as serious in my opposition to the idea, however, I agreed that maybe now while we were semi-fit and able was the time to research retirement options in the community.  Somehow we’d gotten on the mailing list of many such establishments eager to woo us.  How did they know?

We’ve now experienced two facilities, both very beautiful and both very expensive.  Underline very.  I joke with my daughter-in-law that maybe we’ll buy a small trailer or camper to park in their backyard with a Honey Bucket in the back.  Or maybe we’ll move to India as the characters do in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  The young proprietor of a rundown retirement hotel in Jaipur sees a real market for countries outsourcing their elderly.  The splendid British ensemble ably portrays their character’s adaptation to aging and to a foreign culture. 

A reitrement home is itself a foreign culture.  Most of my RN career was in hospital acute care but for nine months I worked as the Community Health nurse in an upscale, for profit retirement home.  I’ve been back stage; I’ve seen the staff without their stage makeup.

But wait.  There’s another option to look at; a heart warming one that our neighbors have presented for our consideration. 

Roses in January — The Aging Adventure

Diana raises questions about the “veil” in her comments to the May 26th post: how thin is the veil. purpose of living under a veil, what is the veil, does it change with place and time, does our being create or thin the veil?  Whoa!  Good Zen questions deserving good Zen answers.  I can only offer a perspective from my own quest and questioning.  The veil symbolizes the separation between this material reality we know as incarnate beings and the dimension of spirit or soul.  This was visually portrayed in the Jodie Foster movie, Contact, when her character makes contact with her deceased father.  In that scene we see the veil shimmer and disintegrate.

We read about illumined masters, East Indian saints, avatars, who can simply rearrange the atoms of their body and move from this dimension to another, rematerializing somewhere else or bilocating.  Carolyn Myss tells about Padre Pio during WWII who appeared in the sky to turn back planes on a mission to bomb a town in Italy.  Pilots attested to his appearance.  This suggests to me that the veil is simply an arrangement of atoms and held in place, according to Barbara Brennan in her book, Light Emerging, by one note or vibration.  Then we have the Chalice of Repose program out of Missoula, Montana that uses the harp with the dying to support their vibrational change and rearrangment of atoms for their movement through the veil to the other side.

Roses in January — The Aging Adventure

The Rose Man had surgery recently.  Not the tiny laparoscopic incision but the old standard big cut.  Out of post-op recovery, the nurse injected his IV line with morphine to treat the pain but it wasn’t until he was provided with the push-button apparatus that he visibly relaxed out of pain.  He was in control now.  He could push the button as needed and it would never deliver more than a safe amount.  Control is the operative word here — pun intended.  Remember the scene in the Shirley McLain movie, Terms of Endearment, when she threw a tantrum in the hall in order to get her dying daughter medication for cancerous pain?  Pain is everyone’s great fear.  I’ve heard so many people say they don’t fear death but fear the pain that might precede death.  Hospice knows patient pain and how to treat it effectively.  If your loved one is terminally ill, advocate for Hospice.  It requires a doctor’s order and many doctors just aren’t up to speed on the benefits of Hospice care.  Nurses and Social Workers usually are and can help.  Hospice treats the family unit of the patient, providing real security for all during that insecure time at life’s closing.  Hospice nurses and caregivers can talk about death and dying when other’s fear about life’s  final passage doesn’t permit.

We like to think we’re in control but are we?  Name the things you think are in your control.  I think we need to discriminate between control and responsibility.  We can be responsible in our behavior and the choices we make but that’s different than the illusion that we’re in control.  When insecurities surface, wouldn’t it be nice to have a little push button control?  I think that’s called God.