Home Is Where Your Heart Is

It was probably the salad--that tiny plate of forlorn iceberg lettuce--that did it for me. I contemplated the pathetic offering, along with the canned chili and microwaved hot dog, all of which passed for lunch, and I knew there was no way I could place my father in this nursing home, or any other.

I had arranged to have lunch at the facility because I was shopping for a rest home and had wanted to check the quality of the food. At 83, and suffering from cancer, Dad had reached a crossroads. Weakened to the point of being barely able to walk, it was clear he could no longer live independently. His wife (my step-mother) had died two years earlier. My brother had long ago moved to another state. I was busy running a business, rearing a teenage son and tentatively treading a new, post-divorce path.

Alone and increasingly helpless, Dad finally had to face the nursing home as a serious option.

Of course, he isn’t alone. Millions live in senior housing. Simply put, this is what we do with our fathers and mothers: We take them from their homes when we decide they can no longer care for themselves, and we place them in frilly concentration camps.

Have you ever visited one? There, you will likely see old folks sitting listlessly on secondhand sofas staring at the TV, or sitting around small tables in the dining hall, seated together but not speaking, like ghostly figures from an Edward Hopper painting.

I don’t mean to slam the nursing home industry. There is a need for such institutions, as our senior population remains a fast-growing segment of society. Most who work in the field are caring and well trained. Still, there’s no denying the essential truth of such places. They are dumps: literally the dumping grounds for used-up seniors. Society may once have been geared to care for the aged at home, but no longer. We’re a people on the move, both geographically and economically, and our parents are expected to let us go once we begin tackling careers and family. And we, in turn, have let them go.

Now, my father, once so defiantly robust, and still intellectually intact, faced the torture of experiencing his own body falling apart. Were he to go to a nursing home, he would face it alone. Yet I stubbornly continued the search, collecting referrals, talking with social workers and learning the ins and outs of properly disposing of one’s aging parent. That led me to the home with the terrible lunch.

Though the sales director proudly escorted me about the grounds, I found the bedrooms small, dark and cramped, the hallways long and harshly lit. I couldn’t imagine my father enjoying even one second of contentment riding out the clock in that two-story mausoleum with the fountain in the courtyard.

And then, over lunch, it hit me: I owe my father for a lifetime of kindness, laughter, insight and love. I owe him for his unflagging support throughout my youthful follies and adult missteps. I could not abandon him to the dump just because he seemed mutely willing to go. I pushed away that plate of lettuce shreds and decided to move in with him.

Admittedly, not every well-meaning adult child could do this. But I happened to be recently divorced, I work at home, my son was almost 18 and soon off to college. I had the luxury of flexibility. So I found a nice house for rent--one with no stairs--and there we will go, Dad and I, where he will live out his life in comfort and dignity.

As of this writing, I’m packing up, preparing for life with my new roomie. I know it won’t be easy. Dad has trouble getting up off the bed and the toilet. He needs a walker or wheelchair to get around. He needs his blood sugar monitored. He needs others to cook and clean for him. Though I will hire home care professionals and recruit friends to spell me, I know the burden will fall largely on my shoulders.

But I’m up for it. The new house is clean and quiet. An orange tree grows in the yard. We can set up a table and chairs out back and sit together in the sun. I can work in my room while checking on him periodically throughout the day. I’ll cook him a meat loaf for dinner and brew fresh coffee for him in the morning. We’ll talk politics. We’ll crack jokes. And when it’s time, he’ll die in his own home, peacefully and pain-free I pray, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, his things, his photographs, his life.

I sympathize with families who are forced by circumstance to place their parents in nursing homes. For many, there are no viable alternatives, and for most it is truly the best solution. Luckily for my father, there was an alternative. Luckily for him, he’s already home.