Last night my husband and I spent two hours gazing into our future. At the end of the two hours, we signed up for Long Term Care insurance.
The timing of the meeting with our insurance agent wasn’t ideal; and in retrospect, should not have been scheduled so soon after the Golden Girls experience I had just days ago.
In two hours’ time, we saw ourselves a decade or two, maybe three, in the future, when statistically, one or both of us will no longer be able to function independently, or inter-dependently.
While the agent and my husband were crunching numbers, I visited a place where I was hunched over my walker, or maybe puzzled and doodling all over my checkbook or lying at the foot of the basement stairs with a broken hip. Or, knowing me, walking away from blazing stove burners long after the pots have come off.
Then, while those two pored over actuarial and premium tables, I traveled to Florida, to an upscale assisted living facility, and watched myself playing Scrabble. My husband was out on the lanai, comfortable in a rocker, alternately grinning and dozing. A musical group came into the dining room and performed a Sheryl Crow medley and the score from Mamma Mia.
One thing I know as I contemplate the long term care scenario is that we must do away with the word “facility.” If I am going to one, it can’t be a facility. It must be something fuzzier.
We were bound to tackle euphemisms here someday, so we might as well start now.
I am not going to an assisted living facility. Where am I going?
According to the blog of Entertaining Euphemisms, it’s a “wellness and vitality residence” or “continuum of care lifestyle community.”
Pretty good. Can you do better?
Word Nymph 
Go wherever you’d like. I’d recommend avoiding any facility that mentions “soylent” anywhere in its literature, though.
My mother lives at a “Retirement Resort” In Southern Pines.
Grand Oaks in Washington, where my dad spent his final days, was so nice that when I welcomed a new resident, it became clear she thought she was at the Greenbier. All would be fine until she called for an early tee time.
Now we’re talkin’!!
Time for another viewing of “Where’s Poppa?”
Communes might work. I think the type of atmosphere where people can/could work, help garden – deal with flowers/, listen to great music, take care of animals and eat good organic food grown by the ‘commune’ would be ideal in a warmer, sunny place no less. The answer would be, my mom and dad have retired to a commune wigwam courtyard home, and we love to go there to visit them and the grandchildren have so much fun. Its important to revise and transcend the notion.
Not really sure about this one. Being just ahead of you by a decade, I cannot see past you two hanging once more at Clayton in Dewey. Return to whence you came.