The Upside of an unwanted move

Entertaining without the dishes, cats without the fur-balls, friends without pasts

Last week we found a new “home”, which is never an easy or fun process. This week we’re getting over it, settling into that home and seeing some unexpected benefits.

All attitude. No litter-box

THE NEW LIVING ROOM

Despite the reluctance we all felt at moving mom permanently away from her own home, the transition had some benefits. Buck’s sudden death, roughly three months earlier, had unmoored us all, and most profoundly Nina. Establishing a routine and becoming familiar in the new environment brought her a sense of security, and becoming part of a community was totally in Nina’s wheelhouse. For this, I was truly grateful.

She adopted her new apartment and her new life with her typical cheer and appreciation. She loved being able to welcome people to sit down in "her” living room which, though way smaller than the one at home, was still light and cheerful. Being able to play host transported her to that role she was so accustomed to playing. Her new set-up—a mini kitchen, with a fridge but no ability to cook (or dishes to clean) was probably a welcome shift. It meant some of the company and none of the work.

She had always loved entertaining. But cooking? Not so much. Nonetheless, she had done it without complaint for a family of six, every night throughout our childhood and always managed to creatively feed whatever crowd showed up unannounced. Buck trained her for this very early in their marriage. One time when he brought home a surprise guest for dinner, his new bride hastily rustled up ingredients she could afford at the local store and produced a meatloaf. The ensuing “Cat-food Meatloaf” and the poor guest who spied the can in the garbage and put two and two together, became the rich material of family lore. 

My sisters visited Nina most days, and various relatives who lived nearby came by to join her for lunch or take her out.  Anne and Beatie stocked her kitchen with snacks, and bottles of wine that Mom had forgotten how to open; but their presence alone suggested the possibility that company might be coming over. Even when someone did open the wine, she barely drank any, if at all, but being able to offer glasses to guests felt natural. It stoked her inner Nina to life.

Hosting grandchildren 2.0—no messy kitchen involved

STILL, SOMETHING WAS MISSING

The brat inside me was still angry at everything and everyone including myself for not finding a way to keep her at home. I was also mad at Nina. Why had she not made more of a fuss, put her foot down, even politely, and just said she didn’t want to go, that she wanted to stay at home? Even if she’d had the ability to articulate such resolve, it went entirely against Nina’s nature. Going with the flow was her MO, and creating difficulty for anyone else was not.

One thing that would have made the difference, and have trumped the negatives of moving into a facility was having a friend. A few years later, I’d realize something we could have done to ease the transition. When a friend went through a nearly identical process we had—the sudden death of her mother, who had been the caregiver for her father who had dementia—her father moved far from his hometown to live with her. Before moving him into a nearby care facility she had hired a part-time caregiver with whom he became familiar. She continued as his companion until the facility felt familiar to him, creating a through-line of friendship that made the dreaded move less traumatic and lonely.

HELLO KITTY

I wanted some type of companion for Nina. At the time I was serving on the board of a cool non profit (shout out to Positive Tracks!) along with Ted Fischer. The company he had co-founded, Ageless Innovation, developed robotic pets as a way to provide seniors with companionship along with a sense of play and fun. This was before the Surgeon General proclaimed loneliness as an epidemic. Social isolation and loneliness increase the risk of premature death by 29 percent, and carry the equivalent health risks of smoking 15 cigarettes per day.

The pets were becoming especially popular for people with dementia. We’d had cats at home growing up. One that required no litter box or “meatloaf mix” sounded perfect. The “Joy for All” pet I ordered up advertised “cat-like movements & sounds and our revolutionary vibrapurr technology,” as well as “soft, brushable fur inspired by real feline breeds.”

That summer, for her  birthday—the first in her new home and the first in 60 years without dad—I presented her with “Artie” the cat, so named because it was artificial and also because it was the nickname my mom used for her younger brother, Arthur. She seemed to like Artie, and to smile and enjoy its noises. After a while during their first meeting, she got an embarrassed look and said softly, sheepishly: "I'm having a little trouble knowing if it’s real or not."

The moment felt like that inevitable Santa reckoning with kids. Whether I said it was real or not, she'd still be confused. So, we discussed it; or rather, I fumbled out something while she nodded, and we settled on just enjoying Artie in the moment and not worrying about the real or not real thing.

Artie could open its eyes and its mouth, lift its paw and almost roll over. His built-in sensors responded to motion and touch. That last part was its undoing with the staff. It would lie there dormant on the back of the couch, a friendly, harmless decoration. But when anyone walked in the room it suddenly snapped its head around like a possessed doll, blinked its eyes and meowed. I think mom kind of liked the shock value, but I noticed that every time I visited, the nurses had always switched Artie off.

(Do you have any experience with fake pets, robotic or not? If so hit that comment button and do tell!)

HUMAN FRIENDS

Very quickly, Nina started to bond with the nurses and employees. Her favorite nurses played into her sense of humor in the hallways or when they checked in on her during their twice daily rounds to each room, pushing the giant meds wagon. Their exchanges took on the easy comfort of their own shared history, validation that she could still maintain her own independent relationships. That little corner of her life that we did not know or direct must have felt good.

She found genuine companionship with the residents too. This was not easy considering few of them retained the basic information about each other like names and family for even a few minutes. On the other hand, there was no pressure to remember any details about each other. She’d sit with the same three women at meals, one of whom needed help getting to and from the dining room. Nina became her guide, which gave her the sense of purpose she had been missing for so long, and that we had unwittingly taken away over the past few years. (We’ll talk about the importance of that here soon.)

Even without in-depth conversations, or remembering each other’s names, these new friends were finding comfort in familiarity and routine; and a whiff of adventure when they chose to get a seat on the van for weekly excursions. Nina signed up for them all. I imagined her in that bus—with her no-name friends, looking out the window and heading off to an unknown place—felt a little like summer camp. At least I hoped it did.

I was coming around to this being a good place for Nina, just as Nina already had that very first night, by insisting she was ok to sleep there alone. If she could decide to make this work, so could I.

Up Next: The power of play and purpose, two things that easily slip away.

Nina, on tour