BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Lyrics:  Don’t you know that it’s worth every treasure on earth/ To be young at heart.

You arrive to visit a friend in a nearby retirement home.  You have been giving serious thought to moving there yourself but this day something seems amiss.  There’s a disturbance in the field, and aside from whispers in the shadows, it’s too quiet.  It’s obvious from first greeting that your friend is worried and she doesn’t waste any time getting to the reason.  The home, her home, is changing hands.  Again!  The last time was only six months ago and that brought changes in staff, a loss of some amenities, and a proposed increase in monthly fees.  The latter necessitated the move of some occupants including two of her good friends.  And now, more changes to come.  Your friend is concerned about her own finances and where she will live if she has to move out.  This is definitely not the stable environment you were looking for, but it’s also a wake-up call.

In a one year period, a nearby retirement home changed from Merrill Gardens to Emeritus to Brookdale.  All are/were for-profit Assisted Living companies in perhaps the fastest growing industry today.  Emeritus, in fact, was the nation’s largest Assisted Living Company, headquartered here in Seattle, home to 40,000 seniors nationwide, and pulling in 1.6 billion in one year.  It was found to be under staffed, failing to hire or train staff for meeting the needs of residents with complex medical problems, and failing to move these seniors to facilities where they would get the appropriate needed care, amounting to Elder Abuse in the very setting where they should have been protected and cared for.  Whereas there is government regulation of nursing homes, there is none for Assisted Living at this time; States set their own standards.

I found myself getting emotional watching a PBS documentary on Emeritus: a woman with dementia suffering from neglect of painful pressure ulcers (bed sores) all over her body, a woman who escaped out a second floor window to her death and no one came out to be with her as she died because they might get sued; a senior who wandered outside in winter and froze to death, an Alzheimer patient who got into an unlocked cupboard and drank cleaning fluid and died.  Inadequate and poorly paid staffing assured that the CEO and shareholders got their profits.

From what I’m learning as I investigate Retirement Home possibilities and options, I’m inclined to favor the not-for-profit homes.  Retirement homes and assisted living is a rapidly growing multi-billion dollar business and my assessment of corporate structures are that they play to the profits at the expense of people a.k.a. you and me.

There’s so much more to learn and it’s not all bad, but you need to do your homework.  To begin, I encourage you to Google the PBS Frontline Documentary on Emeritus.

Lyrics: And if you should survive to 105,/ Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive!/ And here is the best part, you have a head start/ If you are among the very young at heart.  (Lyricists: Johnny Mercer and Robert E. Dolan)

Dreams of Doing

Lyrics:  People/ People who need people/ Are the luckiest people in the world.

A columnist quoted a woman in a retirement home counseling others to “to keep their world as big as they can.”  It’s easy to let the outside world shrink as we move from careers and family responsibilities of parenting our young and taking care of home and yard.  If we’re fortunate we ease into our elder years with health intact and finances to cover expenses with enough left over to fulfill those dreams of doing: cruising down the Amazon, learning how to tango, celebrating grandchildren’s graduations. . .

My world recently shifted and opened up another notch via attendance at two different Circles.  “In the indigenous cultures, circles were the sacred gathering place for wise elders to hold and share important conversations and connection.”  The first, the Circle of Friends, is based on the work of a German healer, Bruno Groning.  I only recently learned of this remarkable man and healer and was drawn to the Circle, one of hundreds around the world keeping his legacy alive.  Like the Buddhist concept of the Bodhisattva, the belief is that a spiritually elevated being survives beyond death to serve sentient beings in their spiritual growth.  Bruno, who died to this dimension in 1959, stated his intention to make himself and his healings available to those of us here after his death.  You can Google him for more background.  He is clear that healings don’t come from him, they come through him from the Divine.

The second Circle, the Wisdom Circle, grew out of my attendance at the Sage-ing Conference last August.  (See blog posting of August 25, 2014.)  “Sage-ing circles are where wise adults share important and powerful conversations about life.”  The Sage-ing Institute evolved from the work of Rabbi Zalman Schachter and what he labeled Spiritual Eldering.  The Circle decided to read his book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing, as a starting point for a discussion on how it relates to our lives now.

I know that there are vibrant people living in retirement homes; I’ve met them and worked with them.  Still, one of my concerns regarding retirement living is living in a homogeneous environment made small by sameness, where the topic of conversation relates to poor health and a negativity related to the many losses we experience the longer we live.  Research shows, according to Christianne Northrup, MD, that it’s the people we hang out with the determine our beliefs about aging, and I might add, just about all of our beliefs.  I like choosing the folks I hang out with and especially those I live with. I still plan to investigate retirement homes in the area, ask questions, present my concerns, and screen for PR answers.

Lyrics:  We’re children needing other children/ And yet letting our grown-up pride/ Hide all the need inside.  (Popularized by Barbra Streisand from Broadway Musical.)