So this morning I’m idly thinking of walking down to the Beatitudes (since my son has kiped my car) and looking into how much it would cost to move into that old-folkerie.
A lot, I can tellya.
After my mother died, my father moved into one of those places. It cost just about everything he had — and he had a lot, for a workin’-class boy.
All the proceeds from the sale of their home in Sun City plus most of his retirement savings went to buy him into that place.
For me, that would be like paying someone else to get outta my way so I could commit suicide. But having gone to sea since he was 17 years old, he was used to institutional living. If anything, he preferred it to living on his own.
Most of the old-folkeries around here — “life-care communities,” eh? — range in quality from good to very nice, indeed. My problem with them is simply that I loathe communal living.
No, folks. I do NOT WANT to live elbow-to-elbow with an army of other old farts. Nor do I want to be required to take at least one meal a day in a dreadful mess hall. Or to have to listen to some half-deaf soul’s TV set blaring away at all hours of the day and night.
That pretty much puts the eefus on moving into one of those places.
But I have to allow: it’s highly questionable whether I’ll be able to stay here in my home — hired help or no — until the last gasp. Or even anywhere near the last gasp.
Because Old Folks are something less than second-class citizens in American society, the only way you’re going to keep a grip on how and where you will live is to make those decisions before you need them and then to get yourself settled in acceptable accommodations before you need them. And since I’ve pretty well arrived at croak-over age, that means I need to make said decisions now and get things set up for them now.
So…what can one do? A few possibilities do present themselves:
* Hire someone — the cleaning lady, maybe? — to come in daily:
- Check on you
- Take you shopping if need be
- Gas up the car
- Bring the groceries home and help put them away
- Prepare at least one balanced meal in your kitchen; serve it or store it in the fridge for you
- Clean up the kitchen
- Clean the bathrooms as necessary
- Water the outdoor potted plants
- Check that the pool is working properly; note any problems observed and report them to Pool Dude
- Negotiate with Pool Dude to be sure he knows what (if anything) needs to be fixed
- Walk the dog
- Drive you to appointments
- Ride herd on Lawn Dude. Be sure he knows what needs to be done this week, and that he does it.
Yeah…sure. What fun, eh?
And what d’you suppose it costs to hire someone to cover all the details of your daily life, every day?
* Another possibility: Put up your adult kid to ride herd on the hired help. Also put him up to doing some of the noxious household chores.
Won’t he just love that! And realistically: Our grown offspring have their own very full, very hectic lives to manage. They can’t be spending hours taking care of our affairs.
Arrrrghhh! So I’m awfully afraid I’m not gonna be able to evade having to go into one of those old-folkeries…simply because I won’t be able to afford to hire someone to cover all those chores, nor, as I get older, will I be able to ride herd on them. Once I reach that point…well…realistically, I’ll no longer be able to stay in my home.
On the other hand: I must say that hiring people to come in regularly and do the scutwork of homeownership is working exceptionally well. Just now, anyway.
I never have to lift a finger to keep that damn swimming pool running, for example. And it’s always sparkling clean and running perfectly. Useta be: I had to work on that thing every. single. day.
Not since I slipped on the kitchen tiles and busted myself up have I had to clean the 1800 square feet of tile flooring in this house. Or scrub the kitchen. Or scour the bathtub. Hiring someone to do that has worked exceptionally well.
While that fine someone is here, she also dusts the furniture and cleans the bathrooms.
The cost of hiring these folks comes nowhere near what it would cost to live in an old-folkerie like Orangewood or the Beatitudes.
And…well…I still get to live in my place.