Nothin’ But A Hound Dog

Let me now give you cause for dismay, but also cause for hope.

Most of us, the lucky ones, are going to get old. And before we get old, our parents, the lucky ones, are going to get old too, if they haven’t already.

Some kind of luck. Seven out of 10 oldies will ultimately require assisted care, statistics show, and some will end up in 24/7 nursing care.

Comfort and clean living in such circumstances appear handcuffed to the capacity to pay large sums for it, unfortunately. Elder care in the U.S. is an industry worth almost $92 billion, economists say, and more than eight out of 10 assisted living facilities are for-profit.

While about 10,000 baby boomers now reach retirement age every day, some 30,000 assisted living facilities do business, including 3,100 in Florida.

Good thing, too. “With more than 5.5 million residents age 60 and older, Florida outnumbers the state senior populations of 20 other states combined. By 2045, the older adult population is estimated to increase to 8.4 million, or over 30 percent of the state’s population,” according to the Florida State Plan on Aging.

Nash Williams and his live-in grandmother. COURTESY PHOTO

Here’s the kicker: The average cost for a single bedroom in an assisted care facility these days is $4,803 per month, or just shy of $60,000 a year, according to aplaceformom.com .

Don’t count on insurance policies or Medicaid to help much, either; those without money or children with money could end up as unenviable wards of the state since many facilities don’t accept Medicaid.

Assisted living facilities were mostly unheard of in America before about the 1980s or ‘90s. Although they offer help with daily living — dressing, bathing and using a toilet — they aren’t holiday retreats.

About 42 percent of residents are afflicted with Alzheimer’s or another dementia, as many as 34 percent have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, 31 percent have heart disease and about half have high blood pressure, according to www.aplaceformom.com .

Employees and residents face significant challenges: “64 percent need help with bathing; 50 percent need assistance walking; 49 percent need help with dressing and grooming; 43 percent need help using the restroom; 22 percent require assistance eating.”

I have some experience with this, so I’ll share it.

For almost nine years, I’ve taken care of my mother, who will turn 97 next month. She’s lived with me, my wife, Amy, and my youngest son, Nash, in a country cottage of about 1,100 square feet through those years, the last four of them increasingly marked by her dementia.

She grew up on a mountain cattle ranch, graduated from the University of Colorado, married and became the mother of three — my younger sister and brother remain Coloradans, not part of her physical or economic caretaking.

I don’t want my mother in assisted or nursing care for several reasons. First, she’s been completely blind since she was 41 and she wouldn’t get what I can give her. She couldn’t lobby effectively for herself, either, since she can’t see what’s happening. Also, I promised my father I’d take care of her, if need be. That’s been, and it remains, my attitude and my conviction.

Her attitude has generally been cheerful in all weathers. For 17 years after dad died of stomach cancer at age 71, in 1999, she lived by herself, maintaining her own house in Colorado.

Once in Florida, she used to wash and dry all the dishes, and fold and stack all the laundry. Now, she can’t get up or down without me, can’t dress or undress without me, can’t use the toilet or bathe without me, can’t brush her teeth or hair without me, can’t get to a dining table and eat without me, and she can’t walk outside to do daily exercises without me. She can’t even have a telephone conversation without me helping to translate. There are lots of doctor visits these days, too.

I’ve grown accustomed to my mother’s old body the way a mechanic grows accustomed to an old familiar car. It took awhile.

Thus — and with a wife and son who have never showed even a single instance of impatience with my mother or me in all these years — I can remain a husband, father, writer and mere child, outside the balloon of those dismaying statistics.

Now and since late last year, my wife’s brilliant mother has moved in with us, too — into separate quarters on our place. At 84, she’s unable to care fully for herself, reliant on a wheelchair, and suffering from a recent fall. She broke her pelvis, her elbow and her shoulder.

But she has love, with the rest of us. I wouldn’t trade that away, and neither would Amy or Nash.

We don’t like all of it —I certainly don’t have fun every day, and neither do our mothers — but we live in a king tide of love, flooded by the stuff.

So it’s a rich life, a life made freer paradoxically by its restrictions and obligations. Love is a thing that changes hue and form. It harbors an inexplicable gravity unbound by the physical laws of the universe or the economic and demographic confines of the day. It’s easy to talk about, but it’s also hard damn work, and it won’t buy you a cup of coffee.

A lot of people know that. They define love in their own ways, but they do the work, one way or another. They’re rich too, even if they can’t pay for assisted living.

If a point comes when we can’t care for our mothers, we’ll find another way — but I’ll continue to do the work. So will countless others.

And all those statistics, in the meantime?

They ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. ¦

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