One of the most frustrating things about giving care to aging loved ones is the fact that there are no right answers to many of the issues we must face. There are far too many variables in each situation for anyone to come up with any rules or even guidelines to follow. We are forced to go with the flow and make the best decisions we can under the circumstances. One of these unanswerable questions is, “Should we move the parents to live near one of the children?”

On the surface that sounds logical. In practice, it becomes a far more complicated issue indeed. My parents moved to be near us. They did so on their own volition without any word of encouragement or discouragement from us. They found a retirement center with separate houses and moved in with great expectations. The joy soon wore off. It had nothing to do with the retirement center, but that was the first source of complaint. My father could not stand the idea that they had to eat one meal a day in the center and had to pay for it even if they were out of town. I think they were given a couple of weeks per year when the meals were not charged if they were gone, but you would have thought they were holding him up with a loaded weapon. They would wait to leave town until after lunch because the meal was paid for and by golly they were going to eat it. I argued in vain. I offered to pay for the meal. I figured it out and found out the meals cost about a dollar each. 

Then, my dad began complaining about having to live in Texas. He would say, "When a person has lived in a town for seventy five years, he should not have to move, and he should never have to move to Texas." Over time, I began to realize the complaints were not the problem. The problem was the displacement and the grieving of the things lost in the process. 

They lost their place in society: In the small town where they lived they were the Tom Manning's. Now they were Doug Manning's parents. Sounds small, hurts large.

They lost their social life: Friends they had knows since marriage were left behind never to be seen again except on rare visits to attend one of their funerals.

They lost their independence: Someone else told them when to eat lunch. Someone else was in charge of the yard, and you know they did not do it right. 

Over time, I became the villain in my father's eyes. Somehow it was my fault that he was living in such misery.

When he became ill and I had to give him a great deal of care, he finally realized that he was living where he needed to live. There is no way I could have given him the care he needed without his being right there. He would have been living in a nursing home far longer than he finally did had he not been there. So it was a trade off. He moved and did not like it, but he was there when the need for care happened. 

If I had it to do over again would I want them to make the move? Yes, the good he received from the long term care far outweighed the unhappiness he experienced because of the move.  But, I have learned a great deal about helping people work through this kind of grief since those days, so I would have certainly done more to help my father adjust to the move. 

I would have listened more, had more empathy for his feelings and spent less or no time arguing and explaining. I would have defended him when the rest of the family jumped on him and told him he was just being stubborn. He really just needed someone to listen and understand what he was feeling. All it would have taken for me to have become a source of comfort to him was for me to say, "It must really hurt to leave your home after so many years," and let him vent his feelings. Instead of that, I explained over and over again how much better off he was, how wonderful the living arrangements were, how he had made the decision, not me. If someone wants to write a book on what not to say to aging people who are working through the grief of displacement, I am exhibit A. He needed to talk, and I needed to listen. I am convinced that, if that had happened, his transition would have been a totally different story.

Would I move him again, yes, but I would have welcomed him with open ears.

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