For The Time Being.....

For the Time Being……

Bec and I were walking our dog, Bess, when we came upon some of our former neighbors.  The young Pakistani has always been very nice to us and felt free to ask us questions that he might not ask other neighbors.  He knew we had moved and I thought he understood about our move, including where we were going.  Then he asked two questions: (1) do you like your nursing home? and (2) is it expensive?

Evidently when one moves to a retirement community, a CCRC (that is a “continuing care retirement community”) some think of it as a nursing home, where people are just waiting to die. In my career as a pastor, I have visited nursing homes more times than I can count and felt the same way. 

Though I struggled with the decision to move to River Landing, because of these same lingering thoughts from the past, but my experience is just the opposite. Since my heart attack and bypass surgery, I had to ask myself, am I ready for a nursing home, or ready to live?  Since I know that God saved and lengthened my life, I became convinced that I wanted to live as long as He gives me, but I have the responsibility to care for myself, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and, of course, most important, spiritually. So abandonment to a nursing home was not part of the plan.  But, River Landing (RL) was.

We live on the fourth floor of an independent living part of this CCRC. We oversee a portion of RL’s 9-hole golf course (though we don’t play), a large pond (one of several on this 150 acres) with a large fountain.  

We were notified of our acceptance, and accepted the apartment we were invited to take. We had approximately 3 months to prepare, which meant preparations to move, etc.  We were also asked if there was anything we wanted to change in the two-bedroom apartment we accepted. We picked paint colors, tile, and new appliances, and all were ordered and made ready for our arrival. Here is the key at this point: They treated us with respect, honored our independence, and sought in every way to make us feel “at home.” 

We had, throughout the waiting period for the apartment and then its preparation, couples who were residents here, who took us to lunch or dinner, to share their opinions about RL and to answer any questions we might have.  They were honest and open, but one thing was clear: they love living there and believed it was the best decision they ever made. Why?

• RL wants you to live healthily, and as long as you can. They have a wellness center (a small version of Planet Fitness), an indoor swimming pool, billiards room, game room, gym, exercise room, indoor walking track and Pickle Ball court, plus their 9-hole golf course.
• They offer exercise classes that we have begun taking, ones that I would not have taken earlier, that stretch our muscles, loosen our joints. Can you believe it, I am in a Yoga class that I call “Street and Wretch”, and a class that I have nicknamed: “Moan and Groan?”  They seek to expand our minds with classes taught by retired professors, attend concerts but also bring them here as well.  For example, our classes on the writings of CS Lewis are excellent, and the intellectual braintrust, that is here, is exceptional.  
• There seems to be less social strata here.  When I got my earned doctorate, like other professors at the college where I served as Campus Minister, the degree legitimacy was judged by: where I got it, who my major professor was, and so on.  I passed their test, but at our age and living here, titles are not even important. 
• Food.  They have four sit-down restaurants on this campus, two of which are housed in the main building.  The other two are by the RL golf course.  There is also the bistro, which many go to on a daily basis if they don’t want to fix a meal(s) in their kitchen and want to socialize with others. They are excellent; they offer many choices. One restaurant focuses on international cuisine and changes the region every two or three months.  They seek to provide nutritional information on all dishes they serve so that those of us who have certain restrictions can have a choice. Let me add, we have family members and friends come and join us, and they love it.  But let me add something that impresses me. We are living in the independent living area, but the restaurants are located centrally in the main building.  On Mother’s Day, the main restaurants had a truly grand buffet.  But what pleased me so was the younger couples bringing their parents and/or grandparents to eat there, often rolling them down in wheelchairs or walking behind them as the residents from the assisted living area or even nursing care area navigated their Rollators. The hallways were built so that others could come from other areas of RL without having to brave the weather, a car ride, and with health-assisting devices. In the RL restaurants, they are treated with the same respect that they would receive from a highly rated restaurant. Family members who do not live here enjoy coming here because the atmosphere is warm, the service excellent, and they don’t have the stress of taking family members who have mobility issues out into the chaos of traffic, parking, unfamiliar people, and places.  
• Becky and I enjoy eating together, so we fix some meals here, but we can get our meals in any restaurant and bring them back to our apartment. If we are ill, they will bring it to our door, a kind of RL version of Door Dash without the cost or tip. In fact, we are not allowed to tip any of our servers or other staff members.  Toward the end of each year, they have a fund drive to collect funds for an end-of-the-year gift to each staff member. They also award scholarships to high school and college students who work here. 

Does it cost a lot?  Simply, yes.  But then, we don’t have a house payment, an HOA monthly fee, it is our version of long-term care insurance, no utilities, little food costs (unless we want to fix it in our apartment), fuel costs, and insurance has dropped already, and the list goes on.  Though the square footage is much less, we have everything we have had in the past in terms of rooms we use.  We still have my office, living room, and master bedroom, just a little less square footage.  When we lived in our 4,000-square-foot farmhouse, which I do miss, we cut off the upstairs to save on heating and air and rarely used it.  And the usable space that we used there was not much more than we have here. 

We wanted to make this a gift to our kids so that they would have less concern about our care in the future. We told them as well that if we do this, we are basically spending their inheritance. They thought it to be a wonderful gift to them. To have a primary care doctor here, and if need be, assisted living, nursing care, and memory care in the future. This has given them a great sense of peace.  And it gives us peace as well, in that they have no need to be concerned like they would if we were living independently away from a CCRC. This is our choice and they don’t have to worry later in making a choice we may not be happy with in the future. In over 50 years of ministry, I witnessed the dissolution of families over care for their folks and in-laws. I watched as caring family members tried to hold on to nurses and sitters and the difficulty in providing transportation to doctors, hospitals, and emergency rooms when they had other responsibilities. We are fortunate to have much of that provided when needed.  And, they have their families as well who may have children of their own and as we get older, they will want to spend more time with their kids and grandkids.  We want that for them and don’t want to present an obstacle that would hinder what we enjoyed with them and our grandkids.  

To be transparent, I miss the farm, our farmhouse, and the sense that we were totally independent. But I also recognize that at 76 and Bec, 75, we are not able to do what we were able to do even 10 years ago.  And because of what is available for us here, I am healthier now than I was since before the heart attack back in September of ’24, when we were living without the benefit of RL.  After the heart attack and bypass surgery, I reflected on who would watch after Becky if I had died? (Parenthetically, I know it is Bec who really watches after me and is able to take care of herself better than I would take care of myself). Bec thought the same thing, if something happened to her, who would look after me? We have lessened that burden considerably for each other by becoming residents of RL.  

Let me say quickly a few more things. Ultimately, the gift of my earthly love, the love that God has blessed me with, is Becky. She has helped navigate all of this, and her encouragement of dietary restraint and exercise, plus living in a place which allows us great freedom but also great care for the future, has made this possible. To have Adam, our son, and his family close by (1 mile away), has been a key to our happiness. And to know our daughter Ginny and her husband are moving within 30 minutes from here (instead of being over 6 hours away) compounds that happiness. One evening when we were out with Adam, he brought us back to RL and dropped us off. He said, off the cuff, “Dad and Mom, this is like dropping my kids off to college.” We are honoring God when He lengthened our lives by taking care of the life that He has given each of us so we can continue to serve Him. 

And so it is. Like going back to college….. for the time being.

Quentin