My Old Man
About a month ago I flew back to Wisconsin to help my brother move our father into an independent apartment down at the assisted living complex, what we called the Big House. Our mother had died there a few years back in the nursing units while the Old Man stayed up at the house and visited three times every day. She could never understand why he didn’t move down there with her, but we did. At the end she was hard to live with and when she died our father never mentioned her again. ‘Til death do us part’ must’ve meant something to him.
So we no sooner got him moved from his house to the new apartments when the entire complex went into Lockdown, some staff person having come up positive for Covid, which meant I wouldn’t see the Old Man the rest of my time back there, something we hadn’t anticipated or else we would have waited until the pandemic had settled down to something you could drown in a bathtub. When I left to fly home, he seemed to be acclimating just fine to his new accommodations, but about a week later he took a dive, seemed to lose his focus sounded a hundred years old even though he is 98 and made us wonder if he’d had a small stroke or old age had just caught up to him finally.
Either way we decided the time had come to move into the assisted living quarters, get some nursing help, have his meals delivered, let folks keep a watch on him. I made arrangements to fly out in a few days, a bit sad that we were moving him so soon but hey, it had to happen sooner or later. Just a lot sooner than we dreamed. Yesterday my brother called to say the Big House had gone into total Lockdown again, no visitors, nobody allowed in or out, no sons allowed to move their father to the other side of the building. Everything right now is on hold.
My brother and I aren’t the type who second guess themselves. We made a call and at the time it seemed like the right call. Now, of course, we might have done it different, maybe let him stay in his house another few months, then move him down to the apartments. Course, he might have gone downhill at home and that would be worse with no assisted living to move into if it were in Lockdown.
But … it looks like from out here we’ve put him in a very nice upscale penitentiary. And worse, he’s in solitary confinement. I suppose I’ll be back there before too long. If we can’t move him to the care units, I’ll have to bring him a cake. One with the hacksaw baked inside….
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Tags: Assisted Care, Nursing Home Prison