The Big Move: Life Between the Turning Points

By Anne M. Wyatt-Brown, Ruth Ray Karpen, Helen Q. Kivnick and Margaret Morganroth Gullette

“A fascinating attempt to marry personal experience with academic analysis to help us all reconceive of one option for later-life living.” —The Huffington Post

When her husband’s ill health forces them to move into an assisted living facility, Anne M. Wyatt-Brown suddenly finds herself surrounded by elderly residents. In this lively and provocative collection, other distinguished gerontologists reflect on Anne’s moving account of her transition to becoming a member of a vibrant and sociable community that offers care-giving support, while encouraging her to pursue her own interests, including exercising, reviewing articles for scholarly journals, serving on committees, and singing. By redefining notions of care and community, undoing the stigmas of aging, and valuing the psychological factors involved in accepting assistance, this volume provides a bold new framework for thinking about aging, continuing care, making the big move to a retirement community, and living with vitality in the new environment.

“We have very few accounts of gerontologists who have grown old, and never before a memoir by a gerontologist who moved into a long-term care facility. This book is not only a first, but is a remarkable and riveting account of challenges all of us must contemplate . . . memorable and compelling.” —Rick Moody, retired Vice President for Academic Affairs, AARP

“Readers will be drawn to this book for its clarity and candidness. It will appeal to people of all ages, but especially to the large cohort of readers aging into later life and facing important choices about their own care and that of their partners.” —Barbara Frey Waxman, author of To Live in the Center of the Moment

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9780253020734

Book preview

the

Big

Move

the

Big

Move

Life Between the

Turning Points

Anne M. Wyatt-Brown,

Ruth Ray Karpen, and

Helen Q. Kivnick

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2016 by Ruth Ray Karpen, Margaret Gullette, Helen Kivnick, and Anne M. Wyatt-Brown

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wyatt-Brown, Anne M., 1939– author. | Ray, Ruth E., 1954– author. | Kivnick, Helen Q., author.

Title: The big move : life between the turning points / by Anne M. Wyatt-Brown, Ruth Ray Karpen, and Helen Q. Kivnick ; with an afterword by Margaret Morganroth Gullette.

Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015036115| ISBN 9780253020642 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253020734 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Wyatt-Brown, Anne M., 1939– | Life care communities—Maryland. | Retirement communities—Maryland. | Older people—Maryland—Social conditions. | Older people—Care—Maryland. | Caregivers—Maryland. | Life change events—Maryland.

Classification: LCC HV1454.2.U62

M359 2016 | DDC 362.61092—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036115

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

Home Places

Ruth Ray Karpen

ONE

A Wife’s Life, a Humanist’s Journey, 2010–2012

Anne M. Wyatt-Brown

TWO

Coming to Care

Ruth Ray Karpen

THREE

Lifelong Strengths Ground Later-Life Wisdom

Helen Q. Kivnick

AFTERWORD

Making Oneself at Home

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

EPILOGUE

Still on the Journey, 2012–2015

Anne M. Wyatt-Brown

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FURTHER READING

Fiction

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Mostly Nonfiction

Helen Q. Kivnick, Ruth Ray Karpen, and Anne M. Wyatt-Brown

INTRODUCTION

Home Places

Ruth Ray Karpen

More and more Americans are retiring to new places. Surveys by the American Association of Retired People find that as many as 60–80 percent of baby boomers plan to move in retirement. They are looking for more temperate climates, affordable lifestyles, good health care, and opportunities for part-time work and volunteering. These changes often involve simplifying, downsizing and moving closer to children and grandchildren. They represent a turning point from the midlife engagements of work, career building, and child rearing to later life engagements yet to be determined.

The big move in our title refers to an even more dramatic change: the move to a continuing-care retirement community (CCRC), where residents can get more assistance as their health declines. These communities offer a continuum of care, from little or none for residents living independently in homes or apartments, to full custodial and nursing care for those living in the health center or nursing facility. Despite the wide range of care needs, the fascinating diversity of residents, and the range of amenities most places offer, the CCRC still carries some of the stigma of the dreaded old age home of yesteryear, where couples could be separated and care was negligent.

Age researchers who study environmental gerontology are particularly interested in how older people interact within these new environments to create and maintain a sense of identity, agency, and belonging (Wahl et al. 2012). They wonder how new residents manage to turn an undifferentiated space, such as an apartment or room, into a specific and personal place that feels like home. Gerontologists find that, throughout our lives, but especially in later life, our ability to create these home places is affected by many factors outside our own control: Processes of making and remaking place by both individual and social groups are facilitated or hampered by environmental design, by models of social care and human service practices and, on a larger scale, by public policy (Rowles and Bernard 2013, xii). A single story of relocation like the one at the center of this book beautifully illustrates how crucial it is for all of us to grow old in social environments where we can flourish even as we or those we love need more care.

Being able to create and maintain a home in later life is an important social and environmental issue because the American population is aging, and older adults spend as much as 80 percent of their time at home. As we become frailer, we occupy increasingly less space within that home—a process gerontologists call environmental centralization. Where we once occupied an entire house, many of us will eventually live in one or two rooms, then an area within one room, and finally perhaps a single chair or bed (Rowles and Bernard 2013, 13). The more comfortable and at home we feel in these increasingly smaller places, the more likely we will be to live out our days with a sense of well-being. And, paradoxically, the feeling that we are in place and at home may help us better release the world when death draws near (Rowles and Bernard 2013, 17).

Big moves that represent turning points in our lives, such as going off to college, joining the military, getting married, buying a first home, or moving into a CCRC, pose many challenges to our sense of identity and belonging. Some of us are more adept at creating new homes than others are. Gerontologists have found that abandonment of a familiar home and remaking a sense of being in place and at home in a new setting is not only stressful, but also a skill (Rowles and Bernard 2013, 14). Moving into new places requires not only researching, organizing, planning, and prioritizing, but also navigating new spaces, engaging in new activities, making friends, choosing whether to pursue new opportunities and occupations, and developing new habits and routines. One must be willing and able to balance the constraints and opportunities of the new environment to create a new way of being in place and at home, while also letting go of some of the previous ways of being at the place and home one left behind (Rowles and Bernard 2013, 14). The stressors are magnified for those who have less physiological or psychological reserve than others, or less experience changing environments, and are less able to adapt. Others do better than they or anyone expected.

The Big Move pivots around the story of one woman’s move to a CCRC. Anne Wyatt-Brown, a retired linguistics professor and gerontologist, tells the story of her move to a community in Baltimore called Roland Park Place. At seventy-one, she was healthy and able—and one of the youngest residents in the community—while her husband Bert, seventy-eight, had a serious lung disease and needed care. Anne describes how she navigates this new environment, first with apprehension and some resistance, distancing herself from the residents in wheelchairs, and gradually making friends and getting involved in the community.

Anne and Bert did have advantages that made their adjustment easier. They were a financially comfortable middle-class couple with intellectual resources. They had done their homework and carefully selected this community based on location, reputation, and previous family members’ experiences. Roland Park Place also had amenities that appealed to them in particular: a café where residents could congregate outside the more formal dining room, a