The plan.
The plan was to spend Christmas with
Captain’s family and assist his mom as she transitioned from independent living
at home to an assisted living facility. The move was scheduled for December 28.
Our plans included making our winter base in College Station with short trips
to explore Texas. Perfect planning! Not only would we be available to assist
Captain's brother and wife with mom’s care but we would have fun exploring.
The reality.
We arrived in College Station as
planned, went as a family to Christmas Eve church services as was tradition,
had the traditional Christmas dinner, attended church with mom on Sunday and
went out to lunch. On Monday, mom didn’t feel as well as usual but chalked it
up to being tired with the preparations for her move. On Tuesday she moved to
her new home. The move went well and we were able to join our “book club” friends
on Tuesday evening.
By Thursday she was feeling a lot
worse and agreed to go to the ER. And that is where reality checked in.
After five days in the hospital with
pneumonia, with help from all of us mom returned to the assisted living
facility. By having caretakers during the night, the four of us have been able
to attend to her during the day. (Well there was one week when brother and wife
were exposed to a COVID positive person and we stayed 12-15 hours a day until
their COVID test results came back negative.)
The good news is Mom is getting
stronger and her mind is very sharp for her 94 1/2 years. She is not back to
her pre-hospital self but she no longer needs around the clock care and is making improvements every day. She is
doing her Sudoku puzzles, plays Pinochle every chance she gets and doing most
of her personal care. She is starting to get more involved with the assisted
living community. We will stick around a few more weeks to give brother and
wife a bit of a respite.
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Our winter home; nice but not interesting.
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One of our biggest challenges is ABN’s
lack of competent driving skills (with which many of you are familiar.) Unlike
our small town, College Station is a city of about 120,000 residents plus
60,000+ students. That’s a lot of cars! And a lot of distracted drivers. Not to
mention a complicated highway system (ABN refers to as a spaghetti system) near the assisted living, brother’s house and
the church. What do do? We have found a
back way of country roads!The family home for the past 58 1/2
years will soon be listed with a real estate agency. ABN will miss the location
that allowed her to walk miles on the many walking paths and sidewalks that
lead to a nice shopping area (that includes Hobby Lobby ) and around the Texas
A&M campus. There is a nice Greenway Trail near the assisted living
facility and walking paths in the Veterans Park and Athletic Complex near the
RV Park.
As Mom often says, “That’s life”, at least in College Station this winter.
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