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Aging in Place Seniors

Aging in Place Seniors

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve encouraged people I met with that if they are going to have to move, the sooner they do it the better off they will be. Well, as true as that may be, I could never really appreciate the depths of what it means to move when you are older until I did it myself.

The house I left was my home for nearly 30 years. It is where I raised my daughter. It is also where I grew to manhood and became a mature, responsible adult. There, I faced my demons and grabbed the brass ring of success in business.

Aging in place seniors

But the grand house, which I truly loved, was becoming too much for my wife and me. That wonderful, spacious Victorian wanted a family, and we needed a smaller, less-demanding house. It was time for a more aging-appropriate place to live.

The house Kelly and I have moved to is only 70 years old and much smaller. I have twodozen pictures there isn’t room to hang. It is a more aging appropriate house built for aging in place and the quiet, private setting is very peaceful. It is a more central hub for driving around the state in my business. On top of that, we love the community we have moved to. Barre City is a wonderful place with friendly people, a good hospital and an excellent downtown.

All good stuff, but I miss my daughter so much more here than in the old house. The rooms I watched her grow up in are now filled with another family and are beyond my reach. Somehow, the old house consoled and comforted me. I could walk down the upstairs hall and recall when I put the birch tree up and built walks for the cats. They would perch up in the branches or walks making visiting children squeal when the cats pounced down from above. This new house is a great place, but it doesn’t hold the ghosts of my past. I am lonely here in a way I was never lonely back there.

 

Active seniors Agingin In Place

Do I miss the old place? Yes, of course I do. It is more than just the house, too. In the village everyone knew me and I knew them. In Barre, people are amazingly friendly. Everyone says hello and smiles as they pass by. But before, I knew the people, their children, and even their parents.

Do I wish I were back in the old place? Absolutely not! Moving now was the right thing to do. It was the right time and I have come to the right place for the next part of our lives. The move was physically harder than I imagined. All those boxes to be backed and then unpacked! Postponing that to face later would have been a mistake.

I spent a long time as a drifter. Over my life I’ve left a lot of people and places behind. But only once have I left the place I made a family and raised a child. The taproot there ran deep. The leaving will take long and peel off me like pieces of an onion, one bit at a time. In its own way, that is good too, for as I miss and I remember and revisit so many things, they aren’t rooted in a house but held deeply in my heart.

Aging in Place it doesn’t happen by accident and it doesn’t always happen in one place, either.

 

http://www.thenorthfieldnews.com/news/2014-08-14/Editorials/Aging_in_Place.html

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