My parents moved to a retirement center in the city where I lived. They did so without any pressure or even suggestions from my wife and me. They recognized they needed to be near one of their children and both of my brothers had retired from military careers and settled in states too far from my parents home in Oklahoma. There was a very fine retirement/nursing home facility in our town and they made arrangements to rent a house that was part of that campus. The house was large enough and well appointed and equipped for two people to live in comfort. 

They moved in with great enthusiasm and proceeded to make friends, not only in the facility, but in the city as well. I thought they had done a very smart thing and were set for the living of the rest of their lives. I could foresee their living out their days in comfort and peace knowing they were going to be cared for by this facility even if they ran out of money. 

Since I am supposed to know about such things, I am ashamed to admit that I missed seeing one very important thing in this story. There is grief in transition, even if the transition is planned and the results are grand, there is still grief to be faced and I missed that need in my own father. The old “physician heal thyself” applies here.

I should have seen the symptoms. My father began to complain about little things and his level of irritation seemed out of proportion to the size of the problem. He began to complain about how the workers mowed his lawn. I could not see anything wrong with the lawn and dismissed his complaint. He grew more and more upset with the center’s rule concerning food. The residents were required to eat one meal per day in the center. The cost of the meals were included in the monthly fee except for two weeks per year when they were freed from this cost to allow for vacations. Somehow that rule became a larger and larger issue in my father’s craw. He allowed it to imprison him. He would never go to lunch with me because his meal was paid for and he had to eat it. I would explain that the meal only cost about a dollar and I would gladly give him the cost if he would just go out to lunch, but he refused. I watched them wait until after lunch to leave on trips because the meal was paid for so they could not leave until the meal was eaten. 

He began to say that a person should never have to move from a home town he had lived in for seventy-six years, and seemed to blame me for his having done so. I still did not understand what was happening to him. When he complained, the extended family would almost gang up on him with explanations about how he was where he needed to be and should be happy being there. Instead of understanding what he was trying to say, they trivialized his complaints and reacted with disgust that he was being so unreasonable.

He moved out of the retirement center, and things did not improve. Finally he came to see me one night to tell me that he had put a deposit on an apartment back in the old home town and intended to move there. He had taken this action without informing my mother and told me she was being selfish because she did not want to move. 

I finally did something right. Instead of jumping on him or arguing I suggested that we think it through together and began to talk about how it felt to move away from the home town. When he saw that I was going to understand instead of argue and that I really wanted to know about his pain, he relaxed and someone heard him for the first time since the move happened. He was facing a deadline on the apartment and I suggested that he extend the deposit for a period of time so we could explore this together. He went home, and immediately called and canceled the apartment. All he needed was for someone to listen and understand. 

The fact is, he was in grief and he had plenty to grieve about. The move had cost him his social life, his church life, his comfort zones and most of all his place. At home he was Tom Manning one of the most loved and respected men in town. Now he was Doug Manning’s father. That does not sound like much of a loss until it happens and suddenly you face an identity crisis. 

This grief, like all other kinds, needs to be expressed and understood. We need the right to talk about the losses and to have the pain acknowledged and legitimized. Far too often we do not know how to put the grief into words or think we are just being silly and just ignore the knawing in our craws hoping it will all work out and go away. Instead of going away, it begins to express itself in excessive anger at little things and fails to deal with the real need of working through the grief that comes with leaving our well established and comfortable worlds for a new one no matter how nice the new one might be. 

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