Reduce Seniors’ Angst During Cross-Country Moves
Moving senior
parents or loved ones across the country can be fraught with overwhelming
logistical challenges, to-do lists, and unanticipated glitches.
In such
circumstances, it’s easy to overlook the emotional well-being of the family
member who’s moving.
But to make the
transition smoother, it’s important to consider the person’s anxiety and
misgivings, whether it’s a fear of the unknown, a sense of loss, or coming to
terms with losing some independence.
When sisters
Rachel Wineberg-Kaufman of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, and Johanna Kellman of
Naples, FL, started planning a move from Chicago to Naples, FL, for their
90-something parents, Bernice and Julius, they carefully planned ways to ease
the stress and trauma.
Here are four
takeaways from the sisters’ experience.
- Respect parents’ wishes
A successful
transition sometimes starts with the timing and approach children take when
suggesting a new living arrangement. Some kids issue an order to their
parents and say, “You’re moving.”
But being
forceful wasn’t an option for Wineberg-Kaufman and Kellman.
Despite worries
about their parents’ safety and well-being, the sisters grew up in a gentle,
loving, and collaborative family and wanted to respect their parents’ wishes
and autonomy.
Several years
prior to the 2018 move, they raised the issue of relocation to assisted living
but were shut down by their parents.
After all, they
had lives.
Bernice was a
quilter and jewelry maker and had a close-knit group of friends at an art
center where she did metalsmithing every week. Julius, also an artist – a
drawer and printmaker – still had lifelong friends in the city.
The sisters
didn’t push. “We opted to preserve the relationship, rather than to protect
their bodies,” says Wineberg-Kaufman.
- Invite. Don’t Dictate
Parents don’t
want to feel like their children’s children, so consider asking someone else to
initiate the difficult relocation discussion.
When it became
clear that a move was urgent – Bernice and Julius experienced a rapid health
decline – Wineberg-Kaufman’s husband simply said to her parents, “We’d like you
to move to New York near us.”
It was a warm
invitation, rather than a heavy discussion about illness, the dangers of living
alone, and the challenges of long-distance caregiving.
It worked.
“What a great
idea,” Bernice responded. “But let's do Florida instead. The weather’s better.”
Wineberg-Kaufman
recalls her mom saying, “We’ll be snowbirds and go to Florida in the winter and
come back to Chicago in the summer. I need to think of it this way. Otherwise,
I won't be able to do it.”
- Humanize, personalize institutional environment
Discuss the
furniture and other items that are most important to your loved ones. “When you
move to assisted living, you need to bring very little – clothes, medicine,
toiletries, and a few personal items,” comments Judith Kahn of Judith Moves
You, a senior move manager in New York City.
That said, some
furniture and décor items from home do minimize the institutional aesthetic of
assisted or independent living communities and create a warmer, more familiar environment.
Kellman, an
interior designer, took measurements of the place in Florida and shipped
several of her parents’ most loved pieces of furniture to their new apartment.
For instance,
every day, their mom sat at a dressing table to fix her hair and put on her
makeup. That piece made the new apartment feel more like home. The same goes
for her dad’s desk and her mom’s handmade quilts.
- Purge later
Consider leaving
the house or apartment intact before the departure.
For Bernice and
Julius, it was clear that this was their last move, and Wineberg-Kaufman and
Kellman wanted their parents’ memory of their Chicago home to be pleasant and
beautiful, not one of chaos.
So their final
glance around their Chicago high-rise condo included Lake Michigan and a space
that reflected their taste and life – artwork, decorative objects from their
global travels, and Julius’ printing press, for example.
“It was better
for them to have that memory of the apartment the way that they’d created it,”
comments Wineberg-Kaufman.
Comments
Post a Comment