Nursing Homes Are Tragic. So Are the Other Options
My wife’s father died slowly but on his own terms. He’d retired to a big house in a gated community in the North Carolina mountains, a half hour’s drive down twisty roads to town, where he spent every afternoon with a circle of friends at coffee shops.
He was the kind of man who lived to sit and drink and eat and talk. So when he moved alone into a huge, 3 floor, four-bedroom house miles from town, we said he was foolish. ‘Get a place closer,’ we insisted. ‘Something smaller, near friends, where you can walk.’
He loved a new car and the long drive, but North Carolina winters, while mild, still get snow and ice, and we worried about the roads. And there was the journey to Florida where nearly all family lived, eleven hours north for us and fourteen for him because he took his time and hated city traffic enough to go hours out of the way to avoid Atlanta. ‘Find a place where the driving’s easier,’ we nagged.
He was incorrigibly flirtatious. ‘Move to the Villages,’ we urged. ‘There’s fifty thousand widows.’
But my wife’s father wouldn’t admit to getting old, and everything we suggested was a stark reminder of it.
Eventually he couldn’t walk the stairs in the house, or easily make the drive, and anyway all his friends passed or faltered. The drive to Florida to…
