nursing home

While Calvin figures out how to rebuild again, his mother is living at a nursing home.

She clutched my arm tightly at every visit, sharing her terror that she would lose her prodigious memory—she was able to recite long passages of Shakespeare—and end, undignified, in a nursing home.

Care Indeed, an organization that provides in-home caregivers, has recommendations for talking to an elderly relative about moving into a nursing home.

This includes everything from surveying and certifying nursing homes to assisting Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries and overseeing contracts or extra payments to rural ambulance providers.

They’re meant to be heartwarming, I know — “Look at these two, who met in the nursing home when their wheelchairs collided coming out of the bingo game!” — but they just make me sadder.