Are your parents ageing in place? Are they losing physical abilities? Mental abilities? Has the time come for them to move to whatever city you live in so you can more easily care for them?
Might I suggest you consider changing the game? YOU move to be near them. Yes, I know, they’re retired, and you’ve found a marvelous retirement home just a few miles down the road where they can be with other people their age, they can take up golf (they’ve never expressed an interest in golf, but still, they can do it), they have two busses to take them to doctor’s appointments, etc., did I mention there are lots of people their age to play cards with, visit with, knit with, yadda, yadda, yadda…
Just because they are of an age doesn’t make them instant friends. I can’t think of anything worse than moving in with a bazillion old farts and fartesses. They tend to have two major topics of conversation: 1. their bodily functions and 2. their children who parked them there and never come to visit. Oh, and remember the cliques of grade school? They thrive in retirement homes!
I know you love your parents, and you care about them, and want to see them happy, but pulling them from a town they know, from people they know, and moving them to someplace else is a way for you to assuage your guilt, not to show your love for Mom and Pop.
Can you imagine going to the dining room to eat and find yourself either unable to break into an established clique to eat with someone whose company you might enjoy while eating, only to then find yourself mired in a conversation of bowel movements—color, consistency, or lack thereof, or the complaint brigade whose children never come and seldom call? Or, if you moved them into the place with the golf course, which they don’t use, being stuck at a table of avid golfers. That’s what you want to inflict upon Mom and Pop.
It’s hard moving from a place where you’ve lived for years, made roots, have friends, and go someplace where you know no one. I know. I’ve done it. And I sought out areas with a good mix of ages. As irritating as those short-legged people with high pitched voices can be, they make me smile, and I would NOT want to live anyplace without them. They help keep me young.
What do your parents love doing? Quilting? Writing? Open Mic readings? Going to the museums? Sitting in the park and watching people? Go out to eat at their ethnic restaurants? Plein air art? Watching High School football? Going to the University for mind limbering classes?
Consider looking at apartments downtown, preferable ones with a wide range of tenant age, where they can walk to the grocery store, take advantage of public transportation, walk to parks to watch and listen to kids run and play, lovers walk arm in arm, visit museums, go to outside venues for music, art, etc., where they can make friends of different ages, and stay younger, longer.
There is one other idea that needs to be discussed—that of the Parent of a Certain Age moving to be closer to her children. It does seem to be mothers who wish to be closer to their nuclear family, especially if Mom is widowed or divorced, and grandchildren are young. I’ve known several women who moved to be near their children, and grands, selling homes they loved, leaving friends of years, etc., only to get moved in, and have the chosen child get a better job a thousand miles down the road. One case I know is the chosen child moved clear across the country. Mom followed. Chosen One moved back. Mom followed. I have no idea if Chosen One has moved, again, but those moves were expensive. For all.
So, if you want your folks to move near you, ask what they want. And listen. And be realistic in the amount of time you are willing to spend with them. Have a date night with your partner every week? Set one up with your folks! Take them out, show them their new town, take them to dinner, the theater, whatever they choose. Make that night sacrosanct as your date night. If they don’t want the old folk’s home, don’t forget downtown apartments.
