The Development

Assisted Living

LIKE ANY NORMAL PERSON, Tim Manning (speaking) used to think and speak of himself as "I," or "me." Don't ask me, the old ex — history teacher would start off one of his "His-Stories" by typing on his computer, who I think is reading or hearing this — and then on he'd ramble about his and Margie's Oyster Cove community in Heron Bay Estates, and the interesting season when they and their neighborhood were bedeviled (or at least had reason to believe they were) by a Peeping Tom. Stuff like that. I grabbed the big flashlight from atop the fridge, he would write, told Margie to call Security, and stepped out back to check. Or "I do sort of miss those days," Margie said to me one evening a few years later…

That sort of thing.

But that was Back Then: from the Depression-era 1930s, when Timothy Manning and Margaret Jacobs were born, a few years and Chesapeake counties apart, through their separate childhoods and adolescences in World War Two time, their trial romances and (separate) sexual initiations in late high school and early college years, their fortuitous meeting and impulsive marriage in the American mid-1950s, their modest contributions to the postwar baby boom, and their not unsuccessful careers (he guesses they'd agree) as high school teacher (him), suburban-D.C. realtor (her), and life partners (them!). Followed, in their sixties and the century's eighties, by their phased retirement to Heron Bay Estates: at first Bay-Bridge-hopping between their city house near Washington and their new weekend/vacation duplex in Heron Bay's Oyster Cove neighborhood, then swapping the former for a more maintenance-free condominium halfway between D.C. and Annapolis (where Margie's real-estate savvy found them a rare bargain in that busy market), and ultimately— when wife joined husband in full retirement — selling that condo at a healthy profit, unloading as best they could whatever of it's furnishings the new owners had no interest in buying, and settling contentedly into their modest villa at 1010 Oyster Cove Court for the remainder of their active life together.

Amounting, as it turned out, to a mere dozen-plus years, which feels to Tim Manning as he types these words like about that many months at most. Where did the years go? He can scarcely remember — as has been becoming the case with more and more things every year. Where'd he put the car keys? Or for that matter their old station wagon itself, parked somewhere in the Stratford shopping plaza that he still manages to drive to now and then for miscellaneous provisions? As of this sentence he hasn't yet reached that classic early-Alzheimer's symptom of forgetting which keys are for what, or which car out there is their Good Gray Ghost (excuse him: his GGG, damn it, now that Indispensable Margie — his "better two-thirds," he used to call her — is no more), but he sure forgets plenty of other things these days.

E.g., exactly what "Tim Manning" was about to say before this particular His-Story wandered. Something having to do with how — beginning with the couple's reluctant Final Move three years ago from dear "old" Oyster Cove to Bayview Manor and especially since Margie's unassimilable death just one year later— he has found himself standing ever more outside himself: prodding, directing, assisting Tim Manning through the increasingly mechanical routines of his daily existence. Talk about Assisted "Living"…

And who, exactly, is the Assistant? Not "I" these days, he was saying, but old T.M.: same guy who'll get on with telling this story if he can recollect what the hell it is.

Well, for starters: In a way, he supposes, "T.M." is replacing (as best he can't) irreplaceable Margie as Tim Manning's living-assistant. In the forty-nine and eleven-twelfths years of their married life, she and he constantly assisted each other with everything from changing their babies' diapers to changing jobs, habitations, outworn habits, and ill-considered opinions as their time went by. In more recent years, as her body and his mind faltered, he more and more assisted her with physical matters — her late-onset diabetes, near-crippling arthritis and various other — itises, their attendant medicos and medications — and ever more depended on her assistance in the memory and attention departments as his Senior Moments increased in frequency and duration. While at the same time, of course, they continued to assist each other in the making of life decisions.

Such as…

Ahem: Such as?

Sorry there: got sidetracked, he guesses, from some sidetrack or other. Such as, he sees he was saying, their no-longer-avoidable joint recognition — after some years of due denial, so unappealing were the alternatives — that what with Margie now all but wheelchaired and her husband sometimes unable to locate the various lists that he'd come to depend on to remember practically everything, even the housekeeping of their Oyster Cove duplex was becoming more than they could manage. Time to check out Assisted (ugh!) Living.

Not long after the turn of the new millennium, they apprised their two grown children of that reluctant intention, and both the Son in St. Louis and the Daughter in Detroit (that alliteration, their father was fond of saying, helped him remember which lived where) dutifully offered to scout suitable such operations in their respective cities. But while the elder Mannings quite enjoyed their occasional visits to Bachelor-girl Barbara and Married-but-childless Michael, they felt at home only in tidewater country, where they still had friends and former workmates. Dislocation enough to exchange house and yard, longtime good neighbors, and the amenities of Heron Bay Estates for a small apartment, communal meals, and a less independent life, most probably across the Matahannock Bridge, in another county. Although they went through the motions of collecting brochures up and down the peninsula from several "continuing care retirement communities" whose advertisements they'd noted in the weekly Avon County News ("Quality retirement lifestyles! Gourmet dining! On-site medical center! A strong sense of caring and community!"), and even took a couple of Residency-Counselor-Guided Personal Tours, they agreed from the outset that their likeliest choice would be Bayview Manor. Situated no farther from the town of Stratford on the river's east side than was Heron Bay Estates on it's west, Bayview was a project of the same busy developer, Tidewater Communities, Inc. It was generally regarded as being at least the peer of any similar institution on the Shore, and among it's residents were a number of other ex — HBE dwellers no longer able or inclined to maintain their former "lifestyles" in Shad Run or Oyster Cove, much less in the development's upper-scale detached-house neighborhoods. Depending upon availability — and one's inclinations and financial resources — one could apply for a one- or two-bedroom cottage there (with or without den) or choose from several levels of one- and two-bedroom apartments, all with a variety of meal plans. Standard amenities included an indoor pool, a fitness center, crafts and other activities rooms, a beauty salon, gift shop, and branch bank office, and periodic shuttle service to and from Stratford; also available were such extra-cost options as linen and personal laundry service, weekly or biweekly housekeeping, a "professionally staffed" Medical Center, and chauffeured personal transportation. For a couple like the Mannings who didn't yet require fully assisted living, the then-current "base price entry fees" ranged from $100,000 for a small one-bedroom apartment (refundable minus two percent for each month of occupancy) to just under $500,000 for a high-end two-bedroom cottage with den (ninety percent refundable after reoccupancy of unit by new resident when current occupants shift to Med Center residence or to grave). Housekeeping and other service fees ranged from $2,000 to $4,000 monthly, and meal plans from individual dining room meal charges for those who preferred to continue preparing most of their own meals at home to about $800 monthly for a couple's thrice-daily feed in the dining hall.

"Jesus," Tim wondered. "Can we even consider it?"

They could, his wife (the family investment manager) assured him. But what about the fact that Bayview, no less than the other places they'd checked out, got it's share of bad reviews as well as good? On the one hand were those happy Golden Agers in the brochure photos, duly apportioned by gender and ethnicity and handsomely decked out in "country club casual" attire while bird-watching or flower-arranging, painting and quilting and pottery-making, or smiling at one another across bridge and dining tables. On the other, such Internet chatroom grumbles both from some residents and from their relatives as The food sucks, actually, if you've been used to eating real food, and Be warned: It's college dorm life all over again — at age eighty! and Frankly, it's the effing pits. The best Margie and Tim could guess was that temperamentally upbeat, outgoing, people-enjoying types were likely to find their continuing-care situation at least as much to their liking as what had immediately preceded it in their curriculum vitae, while the more easily dissatisfied were, well, dissatisfied. They themselves, they supposed, fell somewhere between those poles.

"May we not fall on our geriatric asses between them," they more or less prayed; then gave each other a determinedly cheerful high-five over white wine and champignon cheese at Happy Hour on their screened porch overlooking Oyster Cove, and took the plunge: what they'd come to call the Old Farts' B.M. Move. Given the ever-rising value of Heron Bay real estate, Margie figured they could list for $400K the free-and-clear villa for which they'd paid slightly more than half that amount fifteen years ago, take out a $300K mortgage on it to finance either a midrange Bayview cottage or one of those high-end apartments, pay of the mortgage shortly thereafter when good old 1010 Oyster Cove Court sells for, say, $375K, and shift across the river with most of their present furnishings at a tidy profit — the more since ex-realtor Margie would be handling the sale and saving them the seven percent agent's commission.

Thus the plan, and thus it came to pass — even a bit better than their projection, but at their age a wrench and hassle all the same. In a mere five months, the villa found a buyer for $380K, and between it's sale and closing dates a high-end Bayview apartment became available, it's widowed and emphysemic tenant obliged to move into the Manor's Medical Center. While they'd thought that "transitioning" to one of the cottages might be less of a jolt, they took the apartment, reminding themselves that they had, after all, rather enjoyed that interim condominium over near Annapolis, and that as they grew older and less able than presently, the apartment would be more convenient — to that same Medical Center, among other things. So okay, they would miss gardening, outdoor barbecuing, and the relative privacy of a house. But what the hell, they had adjusted readily enough back in the '80s from detached house to duplex living; they could hack it in a comfortable apartment.

So hack it they did: quite admirably all in all, given Margie's physical limitations. As their nation enmired itself in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Mannings bade goodbye to their Oyster Cove neighbors and other Heron Bay friends (who were, after all, a mere thirty-minute drive from Bayview), scaled down from two cars in a garage to just Old Faithful in a designated parking-lot space, and packed and unpacked their stuff for what must surely be the last time. Over the next year-and-a-bit — from late summer 2003 to mid-autumn '04—they repositioned their furniture and knickknacks, rehung their wall art, reshelved as many of their books as they had room for, donated the rest to the Avon County Library, and gamely set about making new acquaintances, sampling the Manor's sundry activities, and accustoming themselves to their start-out meal plan: breakfasts and lunches together in the apartment, dinners in the dining hall except now and then in a Stratford restaurant. Pretty lucky they were, T.M. supposes in retrospect, to have made their "B.M. Move" when they did, before the nationwide housing-market slump just a few years later, not to mention before the recent, all-but-total destruction of Heron Bay Estates by that spinoff tornado from Tropical Storm Giorgio in an otherwise eventless hurricane season. And most certainly not to mention… the Unmentionable, which however is this His-Story's defining event and therefore must be mentioned, to say the least, not far hence.

And a pretty good job they did, all in all (he believes he was saying), of making the best of their new life. Okay, so they shook their heads occasionally at the relentless professional cheeriness of some of the Bayview staff; and they had no taste for the bridge tournaments, square-dance and bingo nights, and some other items on the Activities menu; and the dining hall fare, while it had it's fans, was in their opinion mostly blah. But on the plus side were some of the Manor's sightseeing excursions to places like the du Pont estate's Winterthur Garden, up near Wilmington, and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum down in St. Michaels (the Mannings had got out of the habit of such touring), the Happy Hour and dinnertime socializing in the Blue Heron Lounge and dining hall, which one could do as much or little of as one chose (sipping from one's personal wine supply at the bar), and the comforting-indeed knowledge that, if needed, assistance was as near at hand as the Help Alarm button conveniently located in every residence unit. They were doing all right, they assured their children and their Heron Bay Estates friends; they were doing all right…

Until, on a certain chill-but-sunny midmorning in November 2004, as suddenly and without warning as that above-mentioned fluke tornado two years later, out of nowhere came the End of Everything. After a late breakfast of orange juice, English muffins, and coffee (they'd been up past their usual bedtime the night be fore, watching with unsurprised dismay the presidential election returns on TV), Tim had withdrawn to his computer desk in the apartment's guest-bedroom/study to exchange disappointed e-mails with Son and Daughter, who shared their parents' stockliberal persuasion. Margie, still in her nightclothes, lingered at table over a second coffee to read the Baltimore Sun's painful details of John Kerry's unsuccessful bid to thwart George W. Bush's reelection — a disaster for the nation, in the Mannings' opinion — after which she meant to move as usual to her computer in their little den/office/library to do likewise and attend to some family business before lunch and whatever. But he had no sooner sat down and booted up than he heard a crash out there and, bolting kitchenward, found his without-whom-nothing life partner, his bride of half a century minus one month, his Margie!Margie!Margie! face-down and motionless on the breakfast-nook floor tiles, coffee from the shattered porcelain mug staining her nightgown and the crumpled pages of the Sun. With a half-strangled cry he ran to his fallen mate, her eyes open but not moving, her face frozen with alarm. Some years previously, the Mannings had signed up at the Heron Bay Estates Community Activities Center for a half-day course in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Warning Signs of Stroke and Cardiac Arrest, and had vowed to review the various drills together at least annually thereafter — but never got around to doing so. Now he desperately felt for a pulse, put his face near hers to check for respiration, and detected neither; dashed to locate and press that Help button (on the wall beside the main-bath toilet); dashed back to try whether he could recollect anything whatever of the CPR routine; pressed his mouth to Margie's in what was meant to be some sort of forced inhalation but dissolved into a groaning kiss and then collapsed into a sobbing, helpless last embrace.

Helpless, yes: He still damns Tim Manning for that. Not that anything he or anyone else might have done would likely have saved her, but had their situations been reversed — had the thitherto undetected and now fatally ruptured aneurysm (as the Cause of Death turned out to be: not, after all, the news of Bush and Cheney's reelection) been his instead of hers — Margie Manning, for all her alarm and grief, would no doubt have taken some charge of things. She'd have dialed 911, he bets, and/or the establishment's Medical Center; would have shouted down the hallway for help and pounded on their neighbors' doors — all the usual desperate things that desperate people in such situations typically do, even if in vain. And would then have somehow collected herself enough to deal as needed with Med Center and other Bayview functionaries; to notify children and friends, comfort and be comforted by them, handle the obligatory farewell visits, and manage the disposition of the Departed's remains and estate and the rearrangement of the Survivor's life. But except back in his high school history-teaching classroom before his retirement and in a few other areas (tending their former lawn and shrubbery, making handyman repairs, presiding over their Oyster Cove cookouts), Margie was ever the more capable Manning — especially in emotionally charged situations, which tended to rattle and de-capacitate her husband. Now (i.e., then, on Election Day + 1, 2004) he lay literally floored, clutching his unbelievably dead mate's body as if he too had been stroke-stricken, which he desperately wished he had been. Unable to bring himself even to respond to the Manor's alarm-bell First Responder (from the nurses' station over in Assisted Living) when she presently came knocking, calling, doorbell-ringing, and doorknob-twisting, he lay closed-eyed and mute while the woman fetched out her passkey, turned the deadbolt, and pressed in with first-aid kit and urgent questions.

Don't ask T.M. how things went from there. Death is, after all, a not-unusual event in elder-care establishments, whose staff will likely be more familiar with His visitations than will the visited. As it happens, neither Tim nor for that matter Margie had had any prior Death Management experience: Their respective parents' last days, funeral arrangements, and estate disposition had been handled by older siblings, whose own life closures were then overseen by competent grown offspring who lived nearby and shared their parents' lives. The Bayview responder — an able young black woman named Gloria, as Tim sort of remembers — knelt to examine the pair of them, spoke to him in a raised voice, cell-phoned or walkie-talkied for assistance, spoke to him some more, asking questions that perhaps he answered or at least endeavored to, and maybe did a few nurse-type things on the spot. After a while he was off the floor: in a chair, perhaps mumbling apologies for his helplessness while Margie's body was gurneyed over to the Med Center to await further disposition. Although unable to take action, not to mention taking charge, he eventually became able at least to reply to questions. To be notified? Son in St. Louis, Daughter in Detroit. Funeral arrangements? None, thankee. None? None: Both Mannings preferred surcease sans fuss: no funeral, no grave or other marker, no memorial service. You sure of that? Sure: Organs to be harvested for recycling if usable and convenient; otherwise forget it. Remaining remains to be cremated — and no urn of ashes or ritual scattering, s.v.p.; just ditch the stuff. All her clothes and other personal effects to the nearest charity willing to come get them. Oh: and if Nurse happened to have in her kit a shot of something to take him out too, they could do a two-for-one right then and there and spare all hands more bother down the road.

Because what the fuck (as he explained to S-in-S and D-in-D when both were "B-in-B": Billeted, for the nonce, in Bayview): He and Margie had been fortunate in their connection and had relished their decades together. Unlike their Oyster Cove neighbor Ethel Bailey, for example, with her metastasized cervical cancer, Margie had been spared a lingering, painful death; she'd gone out in one fell swoop, a sort of Democrat parallel to their other O.C. neighbor Jim Smythe's fatal stroke in '92 upon hearing of Bill Clinton's defeat of George Bush père. Better yet — so he can see from his present perspective — would've been for the two of them to go out together like George and Carol Walsh over in Rockfish Reach last year, when'T.S. Giorgio's freak tornado flattened most of Heron Bay Estates. On second thought, though, that must have been scary as shit: Best of all (if they'd only known that that god damn aneurysm was about to pop) would've been to take matters into their own hands like those other Rockfish Reachers Dick and Susan Felton, who for no known reason drove home one fine September night from a neighborhood party, closed their automatic garage door, left their car's engine idling and it's windows down, and snuffed themselves. Way to go, guys! Yeah: Pour Margie a glass of her pet pinot grigio and himself a good ripe cabernet, crank up the Good Gray Ghost, hold hands, breathe deep, and sip away till the last drop or last breath, whichever.

Whoops, forgot: no garage these days over here in Geezerville. Nor much get-it-done-with gumption either, for that matter, in this lately overspacious apartment, where T.M. pecks away at his word processor faute de fucking mieux (but No thankee, Barb and Mike: Dad'd rather stay put than change geographies this late in the day). Left to himself, Yours Truly Tim Manning is… well… left to himself, making this minimal most of his hapless self-helplessness by chewing on language like a cow it's cud.

Assisted Living? Been there, done that.

So?

Well. Somewhere on this here QWERTYUIOP keyboard — maybe up among all those F1–F12, pg up/pg dn, num lock/clear buttons? — there ought to be one for Assisted Dying…

Like, hey, one of these, maybe: ?

help

Worth a try:

enter