In the summer of 2025, we moved my mom into assisted living. It was a complicated and exhausting project that took months to do.
First there was the problem of getting my mom to do it. I don’t think anyone wants to move into assisted living, but it’s something you need to do later in life as your abilities degrade. Thankfully, my mom has enough money to move into a facility, rather than a family member’s house where the family is assisting the living. And the retirement home she was in has assisted living in it, so you can just move from one part of the complex to another. We had a meeting with her and her therapist, who managed to convince her to get on the waiting list for assisted living. We had to have another meeting a month later when a space actually became available. That was even less fun. We had to be pretty blunt about the problems we’d observed in her behavior. Those behaviors were indicating to us that she could not run her life by herself and needed assistance.
The next problem was that we only had two or three weeks to get the move done. Since she was moving from a two bedroom apartment to a studio unit the move was complicated. Some of the stuff needed to go into her studio, some of it needed to go to other family members who were taking heirloom furniture, some of it needed to gotten rid of, and some of it needed to go into storage. Why put stuff in storage? Because a bigger, two-room unit might become available, and mom was worried about how small the unit was. Thankfully, she decided part way through that this was too exhausting and she never wanted to move again. That simplified things a little.
We ended up having to do the move in two parts, because the mover we could get didn’t have time to do it all at once. So first we moved her and anything she needed into the assisted living studio. Then we had a couple of weeks to deal with her other stuff before the movers came for the last of the furniture. We started packing up the stuff my mom will need in assisted living, but this is complicated by my mom. The first thing she does is pack up her kitchen stuff. But the studio she’s moving into doesn’t have a kitchen. So she could use that stuff now, but not after the move, but it’s packed up to be moved.
We finally got her moved to the studio. The delay getting the rest of the furniture out turned out to be good, as it allowed us to easily get at stuff we hadn’t realized she would need in assisted living. My sister and I then had to clear out a lot of stuff from her old apartment. First we organized it as to where it was going, a good idea on my sister’s part. Some of it was going to various family and step-family members, some of it to Goodwill, some of it to second chance and used furniture stores, some of it to the historical society (my mom and step-dad worked in local government), and much of it went into the trash. Then we had to get it to those places, and despite my efforts to baby my bad back, it was not happy with me.
Right as we’re finishing up with this we’re talking with my mom about some things she’s been looking for. We never saw those things, and we have been through almost everything in that apartment at that point. “Maybe they’re in the storage unit,” my mom says. “What storage unit?” we ask nervously. So there was a whole storage bin of stuff that had to be moved as well.
Of course, my mom is also acclimating to her new living conditions by repeatedly mentioning that she thinks the move was a mistake. I can understand how the move was not fun, and the studio is not as nice a place to live. But it was not a mistake. The more she is interacting with care givers on a daily basis, the more we are realizing that she was hiding how bad things had gotten for her. And the more we were seeing improvement in her condition, thanks to the care givers.
We finally get down to the movers and some people from a furniture store coming for the last few pieces of furniture. That went smoothly. I do the final walk through with maintenance, and they find a bunch more cooking stuff in the stove that I have to haul out of there.
Then I have the biggest nightmare of the whole process: changing mom’s address. Mom is in her late 80s, she tires out easily, and she unstable enough to need a walker (and sometimes we can actually get her to use it). So I figure it will be easiest if I take the power of attorney and just change it myself. Unfortunately, the post office doesn’t agree. The first time I go in they tell me I have to have the original power of attorney, not a copy. I grumble about the lack of notice and they glare at me. I go home to look for the original. I also read the document, which I haven’t done in a few years. I don’t need the original. The original says a copy, even an electronic copy, is sufficient. Anyway, I go back with the original. Now they tell me that power of attorney isn’t sufficient, I need power of executorship. I’m confused, because that sounds like something that happens with the will, after someone dies S.o I push back, and they insist a supervisor will call me. No supervisor ever calls me. Talking with my sister afterwards, she confirms that executorship is only for dead people.
This is driving me nuts, because I have read the power of attorney, and the power it gives me is flipping insane, especially compared to the power to change an address. I have the power to “change [her] domicile or place of residence,” but apparently I don’t have the power to convince the post office that I have done so. ROFL. My sister suggests trying the post office closer to my mother. The guy there is very nice and helpful. He agrees that a copy of the power of attorney is all I need to change her address. However, he can’t do it. Third party changes of address have to be done at the main post office, which is the one that won’t change her address unless she’s dead. In the end, I had to drag my frail, elderly mother down to the nice, helpful guy to change her address in person.
Dealing with this part of the whole thing made me realize that I haven’t improved in controlling my temper as much as I thought I had. It’s more that since I retired I have less people pissing me off.
Then, of course, one of the bigger units opened up, and mom started talking about moving into that. The facility was pressuring us for a quick answer, but gave us a weekend to think it through. Mom finally decided the bigger unit was poorly placed for getting around and not worth the extra size. I was glad. Partly because I didn’t want to deal with another move, and partly because she was so exhausted during the first move that I was starting to worry about her health.
And at that point, we were still not finished. Both my sister and I had taken home boxes of stuff that needed to be further sorted and/or dealt with. I had a box of electronics, some odd money (not all of it U.S. currency), family keepsakes, and last minute stuff from the storage unit and the oven. Yesterday I got rid of the final large item, and I only have a few electronics to recycle and a box of my grandmother’s knitting for my siblings.
I could not have done this without my siblings. My sister was the main force getting all of this done, and I was just doing my best to back her up wherever I could. My brother frequently came down from Richmond to help out, and my other sister even came up from Florida a couple of times. It was a team effort. My sister was telling me about one of her friends who had to do this for both her mom and her father within a year of each other, without any siblings to help. That sounds like a real nightmare.