Being Brave and Facing the Future

The day after I tore my meniscus I lay in bed and felt so helpless! The knee hurt. Badly. All the tasks I had on my list were not going to get done. Period. I could tell I wouldn’t be tearing up a rug, cleaning walls, painting, putting down a new floor, and renovating a bathroom. Overnight I turned into an invalid. It gave
me a window into how it feels for the multiple senior women I know who are aging and living alone.

I have a little “boutique” business I call Patient, Sympathetic Coaching (for people with their digital devices). All my clients were born before 1955. Many of them are senior women living alone. One whom I’m thinking about right now is Jennifer (all names changed!). Jennifer lives in the boonies in a comfortable, pleasant, small house. She is increasingly hobbled with degenerative back problems that largely confine her to her bed. No longer driving, she is dependent on others for shopping, cleaning and other errands. She buys many things online and is dependent on the internet.

Another is Tamir, who lives in a two-floor condo. She is a widow with devoted children who are not local. They have prevailed upon her to stop driving as her eyesight is getting increasingly worse. With great excitement, she showed me a machine that the blind association gave her that lets her read with ease! She is learning how to manage without a car, while still needing rides to shopping, doctors etc.

And there’s Dolores, who has mobility issues. When she falls, she injures herself. Last year she twisted a knee in a fall and spent two months in a rehab facility. More recently, she fell again and broke an arm. She’s back at the facility for the foreseeable future.

These lovely people would be better off with company at home!

How do I know it would be good for them to have the daily companionship possible when living in shared housing? When I last spoke with Jennifer, over the thirty minutes of telephone conversation her tone completely changed from being tight and unhappy to pleasant and companionable. Tamir tries to extend our time together, subtly and politely, but I can feel the pull. Dolores also warms up with company. In each case, I observe that my presence cheers them up. Now I don’t think it’s me – I think any human being listening and talking with them would make that difference!

Of course, I wish that they were living with others. I wish that they had invested a long time ago in the type of relationship I call “home-mate”  – which is a mature housemate relationship – before their current frailties limited their lives and independence. All three live in homes that could be adapted to have another person under the roof. Each has a bedroom that they are using in other ways. But Jennifer’s house is small, Tamir would never consider it, and Dolores is also resistant to the idea. It is simply too late for them to find a housemate themselves following the model we offer here at Sharing Housing. They would need help managing the screening and selection process. They are vulnerable.

When is it too late?

If I mention the idea it is rejected out-of-hand. And given their current frailties, it would take too much energy for each of these women to make such a change. If we had a local program with staff to do the matching, introducing, negotiating, and hand-holding it might be different.

I have another client, Melanie, who has memory issues. She used to live alone and over six years or so of computer coaching I could tell that her memory was getting worse. But a year ago, she moved to assisted living where she has contact with people all the time. I could be wrong, but I feel that her memory is better.

So, my plea to folks reading this is: Don’t Wait. If you already have a home where you want to stay and age-in-place, start thinking about how you can share your home. It takes time to build the sort of relationship I call “home-mate.” It might even take a few false starts. But I know that it can make all the difference.

My knee is healing and I will be doing all that work on my own home asap. I’m not waiting. I had a little taste of the helplessness of being alone and an invalid. It’s not the future I want. It’s time for being brave and opening my house to a housemate. What about you?

Watch the video “Why Share Housing?” for more encouragement, and please share it with people you know who would benefit from sharing their housing sooner rather than later! And here’s the quick link to our Guidebook to Finding and Keeping Good Housemates.

Here’s the next blog posts about my experience.

A Little Help From My Friends

How I Found My New Housemate

A Smoker—Who Knew?