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Thursday, March 13, 2008
Independent senior not ready for move
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Look at what I got in the mail.”
It’s Wednesday morning. I’ve just settled into Blondine Mosley’s kitchen. She’s got the coffee brewed and the honey buns ready. She hands me an envelope. It contains a flier from an assisted living facility in Loganville. Mosley has been invited to an event as a potential resident.
“They are bugging me,” she muses. “I’ve been bombarded with calls.”
Recently, Mosley made a few inquiries into assisted living facilities, just for information’s sake. No way is she ready to leave her home, give up her independence, though that’s inevitable.
This 83-year-old widow has lived in Snellville all her life. She’s the oldest living member of First Baptist Snellville. She’s a 1944 grad of Snellville High (now South Gwinnett High) and recalls getting married one day, then participating in graduation exercises the next.
For the past 18 years, she’s lived alone in a well-maintained ranch house that sits on an acre. There, she raised a grandson who has cerebral palsy and lives in Athens. Two children are deceased. A daughter died of leukemia; a son died from complications of Lou Gehrig’s disease. The loss of the children left her husband of 46 years too broken to live. He committed suicide.
All but one of her four siblings are dead. An older sister who has Alzheimer’s lives in a nursing home in Decatur. So when it comes to blood kin Mosley pretty much stands alone. She’s worried about where she’ll live out her twilight years, a conundrum that she says most friends her age contemplate.
These are seniors who have slowed down considerably. Their health is fading. They may, or may not, need round-the-clock care. They could use someone to help them get the groceries in, maybe cook a meal, do a little housecleaning.
They’d like to continue living as independents, in the place where memories were made. Their homes. Not a one of them, Mosley told me, wants to give up their homes.
“I have a lot of good friends,” she said, “but they are all getting old. I’m not complaining. Every morning I sit on the side of the bed and thank God for the blessings.”
She suffers from gout and arthritis and wears a catheter. She uses a motorized wheelchair and drives a van with hand controls. When Mosley buys groceries, she has to make about six trips between her kitchen and van. She’s fiercely independent, maybe to a fault. The other day, before the Badie Tour stopped by, she mopped the floor.
“Don’t ask me how I did it,” she said. “It wasn’t easy.”
Mosley has friends who call to check on her, who drop by with an occasional meal, who accompany her on doctor’s appointments. A nurse visits once a month.
And she has options. A friend has suggested that she and Mosley move to an assisted living facility together. A church friend has given her the name of a spryer senior woman who might become Mosley’s housemate. It’s an alternative with appeal.
“My doctor told me I could take my van and go to assisted living and all, but it wouldn’t be home,” she said. “This is not fancy stuff, but it’s my stuff. I don’t want to leave it. I’m just not ready. I dread the day that it will come.”
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