Friendship

While I still believe the move to the new place was the correct one, I do want to consider for a moment this friendship piece. I think it is important. Further I think many older folks end up isolated. The bigger question for me is how does that isolation happen and what can be done to prevent it? How can you help your older relatives not to be isolated and what can you do in your own life to prevent isolation?

To think about this I need to go back in time and look at what both my parents had done over the years in terms of friendship.

My mom and Dad has spent the bulk of their adult years in the town I grew up in about 30 miles from my town. After retirement. they moved to the town in which I live.

For mom her early retirement life was one of activities and get togethers. She joined a weight loss group called TOPS and went to it for a decade or more. She was in multiple card and game groups. Early on she was in a senior water aerobics class. As they aged and moved from their first house in my town to a smaller townhouse, and the final house they lived in at the time of her accident, her activities changed a bit, but there were still many.  

Dad was always the quieter of the two of them, but he went along to lunch and dinner meetings. He even joined a weekly bowling group at their last location. He made some friends early on at that location because the developer went bankrupt and forced home owners to take some matters into their own hands. 

But in the last six years all of these activities had slowly vanished. All that was left that I knew about was bowling. My mom had been by my father's telling kicked out of groups over those last years. One group moved their meeting time and didn't tell her. At another a man accused her of cheating, patently ludicrous. At her last one, the week she had her stroke, someone called my dad and told him they didn't want her to come any more; she was discouraging new members, because of her mental condition.

I knew from my conversation with the Ref that these weren't as clear cut as I heard from Dad. If they had been younger they might have ignored the snubs and insults and continued on participating. In at least one instance the Ref told me it was just one person that rarely came that ended my parents' participation. 

Thinking back, all my dad's friends from the past were slowly aging and dying. So although it was less obvious to me prior, he had very few friends left. I think that was part of his desire to stay at the Garden.

I wish my parents had been more proactive, if they had moved during their mid to late seventies to an independent facility they would have been able to build ongoing friendships. Sure as they lived longer, some friends would have disappeared, but at a facility they would have been replaced by new older people. Further I'd be willing to bet that my mom wouldn't have been kicked out of activities, that staff would have kept that from happening or there would have been alternate groups for her to join. 

Even more striking was the thought that when the time came they might both have been able to stay in the same location. For my Dad he might have been able to stay in an independent room while mom moved to assisted. And those friends would have had a short walk to visit both of them.