Nursing Homes

When I was still in school, my maternal grandfather came to live with us. My father had a shed off the kitchen made into a bed/sitting room for him and he moved in. Everything went well for several years, but while I was in college, he started having some physical problems, mainly, moving around easily. He would get up during the night to use the bathroom, lose his balance and fall. My mother's bedroom wasn't far away and he would call for her to come help him. He also had started having memory problems and didn't always know where he was. She was working during the day and between worrying about him while she was at work and losing sleep at night, she realized she needed to make a decision about how to  care for him. Her five brothers and sisters told her to put him in a nursing home and they would help pay for it. She found a place not far from where we lived and he moved in. He was put in a room with another old man, and seemed to be comfortable.

My mother would visit him as often as she could and he would tell her he wanted to come home. This upset her, and caused her to worry about whether she had done the right thing. Then, after a few weeks, she got a call from the nursing home telling her that my grandfather had tried to escape. He had told his roommate that he was getting out of that place, and encouraged him to come along. The two of them had almost made it out of the building before being caught. My mother called her siblings and told them she was bringing him home, and they had better help her make a decision about what to do. He was never sent back to that home, and they found other arrangements for him, not necessarily better, but at least safer.

I often chuckle whenever I picture my 90+ grandfather making a break for it with his feeble roommate and I feel proud of him, and also sad, but I can't help wondering why we don't have better alternatives for our aging relatives.