The other day I was talking with my brother who lives a thousand miles away from me and our mother, and the topic of senior care came up. He mentioned that the last time he visited (around the holidays), he noticed that she seemed to have more trouble getting up from the chair and making her way around the house. I noticed some of these things, too, but any time that I tried to talk to her about it, she would dismiss me and tell me that she was fine, just a little sore.
My brother suggested that I look into the different senior home services that were available in the area. Our mother lives on her own in a relatively small apartment, having moved there about ten years ago when our father passed away. She has been content there, though I think at times she’s a bit lonely. I told my brother that I thought there were other senior care options that we could look into as well.
When he asked me what those might be, I said that I was looking at a couple of assisted living facilities I noticed in the area. There were also a number of senior communities, though I didn’t know much about them. My brother could frustrate me because he would act as though he knows everything and he immediately told me that those senior communities aren’t going to do much for her, aside from surrounding her with other people closer to her own age.
He said that assisted living might be an option, but he didn’t think that mom would have any interest. She was always one to do her own thing, regardless of what that was. She wasn’t a very social person, but I just felt that it would be a more affordable option rather than hiring senior home services.
Yet, my brother told me that senior home services is actually a fraction of the cost of assisted living. He said that we could end up saving mom more than five times the cost by having a senior care service provider visit her at the apartment.
We had options, we knew that, and since my brother knows everything about everything, I told him he could talk to mom about those senior care options. I wish I could be a fly on the wall for that conversation, but my brother was right … we should talk to her together, and respect her wishes in the long run, no matter what they might be.