retirement

By Lisa Scottoline

Sooner or later, most families will deal with the question of whether an aging mom or dad should move to a retirement community.  The pamphlets say it’s not an easy decision, and they never met Mother Mary.

We begin with some background. 

As you may know, my mother lives with Brother Frank in South Beach, and lately they’ve been talking about selling their house.

By lately, I mean the past twenty years.

The Flying Scottolines move slowly.  So slowly, in fact, that we try to sell houses in the worst recession of all time, in which the real estate prices are at an all-time low.  If you need investment advice, just ask us.  We hear that tech stocks are superhot.

If Mother Mary and Brother Frank sell their house, the question becomes whether they should continue to live together, or whether Mother Mary should move to a retirement village.

It takes a village to raise Mother Mary.

And I wish it luck.

Anyway, they can’t decide what to do. They love living together. He’s gay, and his gay friends love their moms, so they’re all living in a happy circle of fragrant stereotypes.

And Frank takes wonderful care of her, taking her to all of her doctor’s appointments, grocery store runs, and occasional dinners out.  There’s a special place in heaven reserved for people who take such great care of their parents, and once my brother gets there, he’ll not only get a free pass, he’ll be allowed to park anywhere.

By the way, Mother Mary doesn’t want to live with me, because she says, “All you do is read and write.”

To which I plead guilty.

And though we prefer her to live with family, we all know that Frank might not always be able to take care of her, and that even though she’s in great health now, she might not always be.  So we’re all confused, and I decided that we should go visit a retirement village near me in Pennsylvania, since none of us had ever seen one.  In fact, we’re so old-school that we kept calling it a “nursing home,” which is the last term that applies. 

On the contrary, it’s paradise.

We were shown through a lovely building, complete with two restaurants and a “pub,” which serves drinks in front of a big TV.  We read a daily menu that included trout almandine, duck with wild rice, and baked Alaska.  We toured a gym that had a Jacuzzi and an indoor pool.  We saw a beautiful one-bedroom apartment with freshly painted walls, cushy wool rugs, and maid service.  We got brochures on discount trips to Egypt and London.  And they have a computer class, a book club, canasta, bridge, and pinochle clubs, plus yoga, aerobics, free weights, and “seated” exercise. 

So you know where this is going:

I’m ready to move in. 

Now. 

Say the word. 

Retire me. 

I’m old enough, at least I feel old enough. 

They had me at “seated exercise.”  Exercising while seated is my kind of exercise.  It’s a piece a cake. 

Just do it.

For example, I’m seated right now, watching football on TV, which I gather is “unseated exercise.”  How conventional.  All that moving around. 

Who needs it?

But to stay on point, I fell in love with the place, and so did Brother Frank.  It even had a huge model train set, which he began playing with immediately, pressing the button to make the toy locomotive chug through the fake forest, until it derailed, careened off the track, and vanished into some fake shrubbery.

He walked away quickly.

I blamed it on my mother.

Why not? It’s the American way.

And I bet you think you know what Mother Mary thought of the place.

She loved it. 

Surprise!

She’s hasn’t decided she wants to move there, and they’re going back to Florida to let it sink in.  We’ll see what happens, and I’ll let you know.  I’m just happy that’s she didn’t reject the idea outright.

I think they had her at “maid service.”

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline