My parents moved to a retirement facility in the city where we lived. They made the decision themselves with almost no input from my wife or me. They recognized the need to be near family and both of my brothers were career military and therefore were not permanently settled. The retirement center seemed to be the perfect answer for them. They had the great luck of being able to rent a full sized house that belonged to the center. It was a cottage that passed to the center upon the death of the owner. It was as spacious as the home they were leaving. There was no maintenance to worry about. They were required to eat one meal a day at the center, but that was the only restriction to their total freedom they had to deal with. It looked like the perfect answer, and for a while they were very happy and satisfied. We forgot one important aspect of this move and that proved to be the beginning of misery in paradise.

We forgot that no matter how wonderful the new place is, nor how necessary the move might be, nor how great the care provided by the center, there is still the fact that there is grief in displacement, and if that grief is ignored it will ultimately create dissatisfaction with even the finest of facilities. 

Displacement means we lose some very important things in our lives and those losses create grieving that needs to be faced, understood and talked through. If not, the feelings turn to anger and the anger usually will focus on some issue in the facility and the smallest of issues can become a huge barrier to happiness or even staying in the facility.

My father lost his identity and stature as a person. In our home town he was TOM MANNING. In the town where I lived he was doug manning’s father. I look back and realize he was a well known and loved patriarch in a small town. He had coffee at the bank every morning and everyone seemed to light up when he walked into the room. Now he was unknown and seemed to be a nobody. Doesn’t sound like much, but it can become an burr under the saddle blanket that is there but cannot be talked about. How could he verbalize those feelings? 

That was not the only loss of course but it gives us an idea of what is involved and perhaps a way of looking at what needs to be available to help folks like my father deal with the feelings and losses of displacement.

Dad did not understand what he was feeling nor did he know how to verbalize it even if he did understand. He just began to feel a sense of irritation and unrest. He started saying, “If a person has lived in a place for 75 years they should not have to move.” I would agree but did not catch the need to explore it further. The extended family would immediately respond by telling him that he was being silly or selfish, that he was where he should be and that he should just be happy. I was busy building a speaking career and was gone most of the time, so I did not see the gradually building anger from his feelings being ignored and his feeling like he was under attack. There was no place for him to talk about his feelings, and no one to simply understand what he was trying to say. The more he was rebuffed the angrier he became.

Anger does not float well. It needs to focus on something or someone. Dad began to be incensed with how they mowed his lawn. There was nothing wrong with how it was mowed, it was just a handy thing to focus his anger upon. He began to rail at the fact that he had to eat one meal per day at the facility and could only take two weeks per year off from paying for the meals. The meals began to dominate his life and his thinking. He would not allow me to take him to lunch, since it was paid for he had to eat the meal at the center. The meals were about a dollar each, but the cost made no difference. He had paid for it so he had to eat there. I watched my parents wait until after lunch to leave on trips because they had to eat the paid for meal. 

They finally moved out of the center into a mobile home of all things. I wish I could say that cured the problem, but it did not. Dad was still angry at almost everything about his life and remained so until finally we had a conversation and I simply tried to understand and see his side of the issues. The difference was profound. Very soon I will share the story of that conversation with the hope that it might fit some other families. For now just know that displacement even to paradise brings grief that needs a listening ear.