Seeking meaning as they live out their lives

The light outside Summerhill Villa loses its white-hot intensity as late afternoon drifts toward evening. The shadow of a Heritage Oak reaches across the patio, through the picture windows to the far end of the Great Room, covering everything -- the large black-and-gold Chinese screen, the small stereo belting out big band tunes, the overstuffed couches -- with a trembling chiaroscuro pattern of shadow and light. The room resembles the opulent lobby of a five-star hotel, except that the clientele are all in their 70s, 80s and 90s, many of them moving slowly with the aid of walkers, wheelchairs or motorized scooters.

Most came to live at Summerhill Villa, a top-of-the-line assisted living facility in Santa Clarita, after suffering a stroke or a fall, exhibiting symptoms of forgetfulness or confusion, or losing a spouse. The majority are not natives; they moved here to be close to one of their children and to receive the extra assistance and medical care they now require daily.

A sort of “nursing home light,” assisted living provides seniors with a palatable alternative to the austere institutional atmosphere of convalescent hospitals. It allows the elderly to retain private rooms or apartments where they can maintain a few personal possessions, their own telephones and bathrooms. Meals are served in a common dining room; shuttles transport residents to doctor appointments, nearby shopping malls and local theatrical events. If needed, the staff provides assistance with bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting and managing medications.

But there’s one thing even a first-class facility like Summerhill Villa can’t provide its residents: a sense of purpose.

“And that is perhaps the most important need of all,” says Judith Harris, a marriage and family counselor who leads therapy groups for the elderly at the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center. “We are meaning-making animals, and if suddenly your life has no meaning, you find yourself adrift in a ‘Waiting For Godot’-like existence, wondering: ‘What’s the point?’ ”

Holidays are the roughest. Many who used to look forward to Christmas and Hanukkah find themselves plunged into depression. Summerhill’s Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties only serve as painful reminders of a once-rich social life that has slipped away from them.

Three stories tall, with 115 residential apartments, Summerhill’s molded concrete exterior vaguely evokes a sprawling Tuscan villa. Inside, it exudes immaculate, depersonalized luxury -- linoleum hallways gleam like sheets of beige ice; windows and overstuffed couches are swathed in rich, earth-toned fabrics. It is the brainchild of Rick Patterson, a Santa Clarita entrepreneur who saw a need in his community for a high-end assisted living facility.

At the far end of Summerhill’s Great Room, half a dozen residents sit in overstuffed chairs. Some sift through a pile of newspapers and magazines on a marble-topped table, some stare listlessly into space. But many keep a sly eye on the clock. When it silently strikes 5:30, the residents suddenly sit upright. . Slowly, with great stiff-jointed effort, they rise and make their way toward the hallway that leads to the communal dining room.

“Look at that,” Zelda Swartz says with disdain. “They sit around waiting for the next meal. That’s all they’ve got to look forward to. It’s pathetic.”

Zelda, a 93-year-old woman with an immaculate bouffant of bright red hair, perfect posture and a regal bearing, is sitting on one of the overstuffed couches near the fireplace. She grew up in a small farming community in Illinois, where she met and married her husband, who worked as a sales rep for a company that made decorative picture frames. After her husband died, Zelda sold her house and most of her possessions and moved to Summerhill to be near her daughter. Initially it seemed like a good idea, but now Zelda thinks she made a terrible mistake.

She’s bored. “A lot.”

Zelda doesn’t participate in the constant parade of activities -- the card games and bingo tournaments, museum outings, happy hours, concerts, arts and crafts classes, and so on. Oh, Summerhill’s a beautiful place, no argument there, but it’s a little like being on a cruise ship that never pulls into port.

“There’s no challenge here,” Zelda says. “I keep thinking I’ll go back to Illinois and get my own place again. I was happy in Illinois.”

Many residents give voice to the same wistful fantasy of somehow moving back to their old hometowns, reclaiming their houses, their lost lives. After a lifetime of pursuing careers, raising children and acquiring material possessions that gave them a sense of status, identity and self-esteem, they have been forced to shed most of their belongings, abandon their jobs, and embrace a communal existence in which there is nothing left to strive for.

“Americans have this powerful desire for a happy ending. It’s woven into our movies, our books, our magazine stories and pop mythology,” says Dr. Rosalie Kane, an expert on assisted living facilities at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. “But the reality of the golden years is much more complicated than that. You can’t simply wash away all of the losses, move into one of these facilities, and instantly embrace it as a happy new home and community. The transition is much more difficult than that.”

And in the decades to come many more of us will have to make it. Today the nation’s retirement communities, senior centers and nursing homes are populated by the last survivors of the generation that endured the Great Depression and World War II. In another decade, 80 million baby boomers (about 30% of our current population) will begin to take their parents’ places. Americans have gained an additional one-third in life expectancy in the past 100 years, and with continued advances in medicine the boomers will likely live even longer than their predecessors.

All of this has sparked the explosive growth of assisted living facilities such as Summerhill Villa over the last decade. There are 36,399 assisted living complexes with 910,000 apartment units in the U.S., and 6,207 facilities in California with 147,580 apartment units.

This spring, California will launch a three-year test program to gauge the cost effectiveness of Medicaid funding for low-income seniors to live in assisted living settings. If it proves fiscally feasible, hundreds of thousands more seniors will be able to afford assisted living. This will come as good news for many, but rich and poor alike will still be faced with the difficulties of adjusting to a radical lifestyle change.

A creative outlet helps

At Summerhill, some -- particularly those with an artistic streak -- more readily adapt to their new environment. Marty Baxter finds life at Summerhill Villa to be rewarding, full of fun and excitement. But she has always found life to be like that, ever since she leapt into the music business 62 years ago.

“Music’s been my whole life,” says Baxter, an 82-year-old woman with an effervescent smile, bright blue eyes and bobbed gray-brown hair.

Born in North Dakota, Baxter got her professional start in 1941, at 20. Marty became a singer with the Frankie Masters Orchestra and married piano player Eddie Baxter in 1946. Eddie and Marty toured together for 48 years. After Eddie died in 1994, Marty continued to perform one-woman shows with her Yamaha organs on cruise ships. Finally, a year and a half ago, she decided to retire and moved into Summerhill to be near her son and his family.

Baxter spends most of her days doing what she’s been doing for the last six decades: rehearsing her music, and putting together shows, which she now performs for Summerhill’s other residents.

“I brought my three Yamaha organs with me,” she says. “I keep two in my room to rehearse on and one in the Great Room for my shows. I spend most of my time coming up with parodies of popular songs. Most of them make fun of getting old, which is what we’re all facing.

“Deaths are about as frequent as birthdays in this place. You have to find a way to laugh about it, or you’ll get too depressed to get out of bed in the morning.”

Baxter sets an inspiring example, but what do you do if you weren’t particularly creative, if your only passion in life was for your spouse, who pulled a dirty trick and died?

‘I was 13. He was 15’

Shirley LOWE is eager to show her room off to a visitor. She points out the framed needlepoint landscapes that she knitted decades ago, the 75-year-old redwood desk that she’s had since she was a little girl, then lingers over a photograph of herself with her husband, Harold, taken on their wedding day, 62 years ago. Harold sports a dapper Clark Gable moustache, and a heavy wool tuxedo with a white bow tie.

“I met him when I was 13,” Shirley explains. “He was 15.”

They married in 1941; Shirley was 20, Harold 22. Harold went to work for Kohorn Corp., which manufactured rayon, and eventually was put in charge of the company’s overseas operations. The Lowes, who raised two kids, moved to Granada Hills in 1964.

When Harold retired in 1993, they bought a house in Leisure World, a retirement community for active, self-sufficient seniors, near Laguna. “I loved Leisure World,” Shirley says. “We had a group of friends we played cards with. We went out to the theater and different social events together.”

Shirley wears a fixed smile as she talks; her tone is pleasant, but her eyes are drenched in sadness. “Six months ago, Harold died of cancer,” she says abruptly. “I got upset and went into the hospital myself while he was sick. They said I was suffering from depression. I never went to his funeral. I don’t remember him dying.”

She moved to Summerhill because her daughter, Rita, lives in Santa Clarita. “I wanted to move into an apartment at first, but my children were afraid I’d sit in there and never come out. Here, I’m forced to come down and be with people. I’m happy.”

But her eyes deny it. She stares at the wedding picture, then sighs. “I knew him my whole life, since we were kids. We did everything together. I haven’t been able to cry. I was sent to see a counselor here. I spoke to a woman, but she couldn’t help me. It’s too soon.”

The smile remains fixed on her mouth. “My husband and I promised each other that we would go together. I said I would go first; he could go after me. It didn’t work out that way. I miss him so.”

Harris, the counselor, says: “Often the people who have the most difficult time coping are those who have had an easy and happy life. The language of pain is best learned young. If you haven’t had too many struggles by the time you get to be in your 70s and 80s, you’re not equipped for coping with setbacks.”

But some Summerhill residents have an innate resiliency, an ability to let go of the past without forgetting, to find meaning not in work, art or religion but in other people.

Glen Helm sits in the Great Room in the early evening, one large spotted hand resting on the handle of his cane. His arms, protruding from a short-sleeved blue-and-white-striped shirt, are ribbed with loose folds of flesh. He wears bifocal glasses and a baseball hat emblazoned with a map of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.

An “X” made with a fountain pen marks the spot where Glen was born in Northern Arkansas, in 1911. He worked most of his life as a building contractor. “I don’t have an education,” he admits. Still, he managed to earn a comfortable living for his wife and four children and put two of them through college.

In 1984, Glen’s wife, Lorene, was stricken with Alzheimer’s and for the next 15 years he struggled to care for her. By the time she died, in 1999, Glen had moved into Capri, an assisted living facility in Santa Clarita, near his daughter’s home. It was a tough period.

“Everything stacked up on me,” Helm says. “I think that’s one reason that I was so caught up with trying to find somebody that I could talk to.” The somebody turned out to be Alva Kippers. Alva was disabled by a number of chronic illnesses and used a motorized scooter to move around Capri. When Glen describes the first time they met, he evokes the love-struck Gregory Peck in “Roman Holiday,” falling under the spell of Audrey Hepburn.

“One day I came down a corridor, turned a corner, and Alva came shooting around from the opposite direction on her scooter. She stopped for a moment, looked up at me, and we spoke.

“It was like lightning striking.”

Soon they were inseparable. “We would sit and talk and in the evening we would go out on the patio. She was a wonderful companion.”

When Summerhill Villa opened in April 2001, Helm decided to move to the new facility and talked Alva into coming with him. He picked out a room for her, bought furniture, hung pictures, and even remodeled the cabinetry with the help of his son, Larry.

But a few days later Alva fell ill and had to be hospitalized. “My daughter and her husband took me to see Alva on a Sunday,” Glen says. “After we left, later that night, she died. Everybody knew she wasn’t gonna make it. It was a vicious way to go.”

Glen reaches up to the brim of his baseball hat and shifts it back and forth across his broad bald head. He takes a couple of deep breaths. “It was hard to get over.”

But after losing his wife and Alva, almost back to back, Glen Helm did not give in to depression. Instead, he embarked on a relationship with a new woman, because, as Glen explains it: “Being alone isn’t a lovely life. It’s rough for a man to be without a companion.”

A new companion

Ruth MELNE is a vibrant 84-year-old woman with blue-gray eyes and an upbeat smile. She also has been at Summerhill almost since it opened, and she too lost a spouse to Alzheimer’s.

“I heard that this man’s sweetheart had passed away,” Ruth explains. “Then I met Glen. He was very sad. I didn’t become close with him right away, just little by little.”

Glen started dropping by Ruth’s table at dinner, just to say hi. After he departed one time, Ruth’s tablemate said, “That guy’s got his eye on you.” Now they’re inseparable.

Ruth works as a volunteer at the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center four days a week, but she takes the weekends off and spends them with Glen. “I still drive,” Ruth says, “so we do errands and stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken. A couple of mornings we sleep in and go over to IHOP and have breakfast.

Ruth enjoys having a male companion again. “We don’t have to worry about raising children, or making a living, or balancing a budget. There are no concerns for anybody else, just for each other. It’s very romantic but not sexual, because that just isn’t possible. We enjoy cuddling, holding each other.

“Glen says that he loves me, many times a day. It’s wonderful to hear. At this age, not many women have that privilege and pleasure.”

Glen and Ruth are not an anomaly. There are other couples at Summerhill, and romantic intrigues are common at many assisted living facilities and retirement hotels.

“I see Ruth when I’m running therapy groups at the senior center,” Harris says. “She’s like a young girl when she talks about Glen. They walk around holding hands.

“One of my clients, who was about 75, had met someone who was 89. He wanted to take her on a cruise. She was worried that the only thing he was after was sex. You think once you reach that age all of that is over. But these people are showing us that it’s not, that the same things that happen when you’re younger, if you remain open to them, happen when you’re older.”

Of course, even the most positive attitude in the world cannot make time stand still. When Ruth first got involved with Glen, she hoped that their relationship would help to keep him young. “But I don’t think it’s worked. He has aged quite a bit. He’s getting weaker. His legs aren’t working, his eyes aren’t working, and his ears aren’t working. His mind is slowing down. It’s very hard on him. But he tries very hard.

“If he does continue to go downhill,” Ruth says, “I’ll stay with him. Glen’s not going to lose me. I think I’m going to lose him before he loses me.”

Ruth says this not morosely but in a warm, matter-of-fact manner. She is used to loss; she buried a husband, and a son who died of heart failure at 16. She learned a long time ago that love and grief are inextricably linked.

“There’s an old Sufi saying,” Harris says. “ ‘When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the soul rejoices for what it has found.’ Elders who age well are the ones who deal with the soul issues, the meaning issues, and who try to find pleasure while they’re going through all of these losses instead of focusing on the loss as the defining event of their life.”