Almost There

Tomorrow, Mom goes to Carillon House (Monday). The maintenance people will move her lift chair over at some point, but everything else will have to be schlepped over one cart-load at a time by yrs trly. I spent the past three days sewing (on all four sides) 54 name labels on two pairs of cloth shoes with rubber soles as well as 50 pieces of clothing. (She needs to have enough changes of clothes that if it takes the laundry 4-5 days to get her clothes back to her, she won’t run out of clean clothes to wear.) I’m still waiting on a white laundry marker, which will arrive Thursday. Guess what I’ll be doing then — writing her room number on all her black socks!

We still don’t know the room number of the room she’ll be moving to, or what time Monday we’ll have to herd the turtles over there. I’ll probably end up writing her room number on all her clothes with laundry markers, too. (They have an on-site laundry but staffing it has been a problem for them as well as for everywhere else these days.) If you get back most of the laundry you send, you’re ahead of the game. Evidently, no matter where you live, the resident Lares and Penates must be propitiated with socks.

Hopefully this move will take no more than two days. I might can do it in three trips. There are a goodly number of clothes to be carted over, all her toiletries and personal effects to be carted over and put where she can find them, pictures to be taken down here and hung there. There is a USB extension cord (for her phone charger and tablet charger cords) to be positioned and taped down so she can’t knock it off on the floor, and a table lamp to position so she can get to the cord switch. She has acquired 3 poinsettias that will have to be carted over. Her Christmas decorations will have to go over and be put somewhere. At some point, maintenance will come get her lift chair and bedside lamp and other equipment, and I’ll have to follow it over. Don’t know when that will happen. They’ll have to hang her big 50th wedding anniversary thing, but I think I can hang the rest of them (I may have to haul a step ladder over in the cart).

She is glad to be moving. She liked being at Carillon House, and I was very satisfied with the level of care she got there. She understands and accepts the situation, that it is best for both of us. There was always some doubt that she would be able to sustain the level of mental and physical activity she needs to be living in an assisted living situation, and it’s clear she can’t. It’s not like it’s totally unexpected. She’s 97. We both have our health issues, and this is the best resolution for the situation.