Making Informed Choices

Frances Kolarek-150 wideBy Frances Kolarek —

The son of a late resident of a Kendal Continuing Care Retirement Community wrote: “When my mom lived there, she had all the freedom she could handle and all the help she needed.”

Freedom is a key word. Living independently in a CCRC provides complete freedom to come and go as one pleases, to continue to drive one’s car, to invite friends to dinner and at Collington, to enjoy one’s own bottle of wine with the meal. For a number of couples, it means being able to lock the door and go to Maine for the summer with complete peace of mind.

Another telling point is “all the help she needed.” As life spans exceed our expectations, youngsters in their 60s are ill-informed about the demands and limitations that the 80s and 90s can impose.

Our energy is curtailed, household chores become more demanding, if not onerous, and efforts to keep up with maintenance find us falling behind.

Enter the CCRC offering meals and housekeeping services, freedom from maintenance chores, and also health care. Leisure time is waiting to be filled with interests you always wanted to develop — music, the study of literature, photography, or travel — your choice.

It is important, however, to pick the CCRC that matches your needs and interests. Visits that include a meal or two with residents will give insights into the kinds of people you would be living among — your best key to a community’s suitability.

The following e-mail, from a fellow Collingtonian in his 70s, demonstrates that his recent Baby Boomer neighbors are clueless about the way the years can rob us of our “get up and go.”

“We learned last week that former neighbors of ours, in their late 60s, have bought a house in a Florida development where some 100,000 people 55 and older live in “villages” among several golf courses, traversing the village streets in golf carts. There are clinics, but no facility for a higher level of care. Restaurants are available, but costly. Residents have all the responsibilities of home ownership.

“Our ex-neighbors don’t even play golf, but they hate cold weather and this is their idea of retirement. It’s my idea of hell. Obviously, legions of baby boomers are in denial about the realities of advanced aging, which presumably is one reason they resist learning about Continuing Care Retirement Communities.”

Collington’s marketing department is doing its best to correct any false impressions, if not ignorance, that surrounds life in a CCRC. A retirement community is not a nursing home. Neither is it an assisted living facility, although it provides the services of both when the need arises. And we have welcomed a number of people who bought into communities like the one in Florida and now embrace life here enthusiastically.

65? 70? Have you considered a CCRC? Did you say you are “not ready yet?” Not ready to retire the lawn mower and snow shovel? Not ready to say goodbye to KP? Not ready for a life that offers “all the freedom you can handle and all the help you need?” Why ever not?

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Let me know what you think. Drop me a line at CollBlog2@gmail.com.