Making Nursing Homes More Like Home

My grandfather lived to be 102 years old. He was healthy until the day he died. We stayed close to him. He knew we all loved him and we knew he loved us.

He walked almost a mile and back every day to the senior center until he was 98 and it became to taxing for him. He then started taking the bus. He didn’t like that so much, but he did it anyway.

When he was 99 years old, he got mugged by 3 girls who beat him with their fists, kicked him around and also used his cane to beat him. He wasn’t the same after that and he became frightened as well as began getting headaches.

He had lived in his own apartment until that time and he finally asked us to find him a good nursing home. We knew one because my other grandmother had been there until she died at the age of 91.

They were both glad to be there. Though she (my father’s mother) died before my grandfather (mother’s father) went in, they liked it there, felt at home and felt safe there. They had large rooms with private bathrooms and they brought their own furniture there so they felt at home.

Instead of lunch exactly at noon or dinner exactly at 5, you could choose a dinner time between 4:30 and 7:00. lunch between 11:00 and 1:30 and breakfast between 7:00 and 9:00. This made it easier and accommodated all schedules. People could come and go as they pleased and there was no bedtime except that TV’s had to quiet down by 10 P.M. or you had to use head phones.