In the fall of 2022, my mother had a mini-stroke. It was a wake-up call for my siblings and me when we realized she couldn’t communicate with us. I thought we had done a good job creating a long-term care plan for the time when my mother would move to a continuing care community. We had all the proper paperwork, including her medical directives and healthcare power of attorney (POA). My mom even has a comprehensive coverage long-term care policy. The problem was even though we had been working with my mom on her long-term care plans, we were not ready when it looked like she would need care. Here are three lessons learned from my experience.
Frequent Communication
One of our biggest concerns was not knowing where my mother would want to live if she required continued long-term care after the stroke. I have worked with my mother on her long-term care plan since we moved my father into a nursing home 16 years ago. My mom has spent the last 13 years splitting her time between a 55 and older community in Massachusetts and a second home in Florida. As she has aged, she decided that she would eventually like to live in a continuing-care retirement community. She began looking into these communities in 2018 but a health issue followed by the COVID pandemic, put her search on hold.
We are very fortunate that my mother recovered quickly after her stroke and did not need long-term care. We have now made it a point to have regular conversations about what she wants for the next phase of her life, and she is beginning to explore the various options around her. Our current goal is to help her decide where she wants to live once she requires more assistance. If I had to do it over again, I would have encouraged my mom to start exploring these communities when she was 70 with her making a decision about where she would want to go by 75. That would not only have given us peace of mind knowing where she wanted to go but given her more time to get over the mental hurdles you go through when preparing to move to one of these communities.
Making The Transition Is Difficult
It takes time to both physically and mentally prepare for the big move into a long-term care community. There are several hurdles your parents will have to get over before they permit themselves to make a move. Here are the three main hurdles I have found so far.
- Even in independent living, your parents will most likely end up downsizing their living space. This can create a lot of stress around letting go of personal effects they have accumulated over their lifetime. A whole new business industry exists to help you figure out what to keep, sell, donate, or throw away. But it will still take patient encouragement from you to help your parents get to a point where they are ready to go through this process.
- Moving into a new community means relocating to a place where your parents might not know anyone. Fortunately, many of these communities allow you to spend the night in one of the models to experience what living there is like. A kind of try “before you buy,” if you will. This gives your parents a chance to discover some of the daily social activities and what it would be like to live there. These places understand the importance of socialization and make it easy for their members to make new friends within the community.
- You may find that your parents think moving somewhere else isn’t worth the money. And yes, moving into a community like this is expensive, but will it improve the quality of life in their later years? If the answer is yes, you have to assume it will be worth the cost. All we want is for our parents to live their best lives up until the end. We’ve been reminding our mother about how living in one of these communities could improve her quality of life whenever she brings up an obstacle that she is dealing with living on her own. Last week she told me that her friend’s 85th birthday party would be after 5 pm. My mom can’t drive at night anymore. My brother-in-law will drive her to the party, but I mentioned that one of the communities we looked at offers free car service within a 5-mile radius of the community. That would be a perfect ongoing solution for her.
Searching For A Community Is Easier Than You Think
https://www.aplaceformom.com is a wonderful resource. I was able to fill out a form online and was contacted by the company within the hour. They asked detailed questions about the location my mom would want to live in, the kind of support/services she would want, what type of place she would prefer, and what hobbies and activities she would like to have available. They sent a list of four great communities to check out within minutes.
The next step was asking my mother to think about what elements would be important for the community to have. This helped us define the type of living space she would want, such as one or two bedrooms, a full kitchen or kitchenette, etc. It also helped us define the types of social engagements she would want access to like; book club, trips to museums and the symphony, painting classes, scrabble club, author visits, etc. Armed with this information, My sister and I toured the different communities to narrow down the options before bringing our mom along to visit the top two choices.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, now or in the future, I hope this information can provide some insight and guidance on how to build a long-term care plan. The most important thing is always to have an open line of communication with your parents about what comes next. They want to maintain as much independence for as long as they can. And you want peace of mind knowing they are always living their best life. A retirement community might be the place to ensure that both your goals are reached.
Do you or your parents have long-term care plan questions? Contact a an MFAA planner to discuss your specific situation.