I didn’t know how much my mom had deteriorated until my dad went to the hospital. Mom had seemed forgetful for a while, but when Dad was suddenly hospitalized one night, I knew Mom’s problem was more than just a little forgetfulness. I went downstairs to stay with her and for the first week Dad was sick, I thought she was sad and exhausted because he wasn’t around her. However, when she passed away the following week, I learned that she had been trusting my dad to remember everything for years, even for little things like whether she remembered to put away groceries and whether he had his glasses on.

My brothers are not the most reliable couple, so it became my responsibility to organize everything for my dad’s funeral, manage his estate, and take care of my mom. I thought about moving her into my house, but I couldn’t be home all day to take care of her. She often forgot that she couldn’t remember things and I was afraid she would turn on the tub and forget, or even worse like a gas burner on the stove. I must admit that I am also not an expert in senior care who can take care of all your needs. As much as I didn’t like the idea, it was time to find a retirement home for my mom. Of course, my brothers couldn’t be counted on to help with that either.

I wasn’t sure what kind of retirement home to put mom in. My last experience with one was decades before, when my husband’s great-aunt lived in a terribly run-down nursing home. I knew that this was not the kind of place I wanted for my mom. Other than that, though, he didn’t know what he was looking for.

After doing some research online, I discovered that there were many different types of retirement homes, but that didn’t tell me which one was the best fit for my mom. With everything that happened after my dad died, I just didn’t have time to visit a bunch of different facilities and talk to all the people, so the next time I took mom to a doctor’s appointment, I asked the nurse if she had a few minutes to spare to tell me about nursing homes.

Fortunately, the nurse knew my mom and knew exactly what was needed. After a brief conversation that lasted only a few minutes, I learned that my mother needed an assisted living facility. The nurse told me that with assisted living, a trained senior care staff would take care of my mom’s daily chores and make sure she didn’t forget anything important.

With that information, I was able to get back online and find assisted living facilities in my city. The one that intrigued me the most said it was both an independent living facility and an assisted living facility. After a brief phone call to the location, I scheduled a visit with the director of the retirement home.

The director gave me a tour and told me all about how they handle their assisted living residents. My mom thought it was a great deal because she said that senior care staff only help residents with things that residents really need help with. For everything else, they let residents have the freedom to live on their own. She also told me that the senior care staff continuously monitors assisted living residents’ situations and offers more assistance when residents deteriorate further.

Of course, I had to ask what the residents did during the day. I didn’t want my mom to be bored sitting in a room all day like my husband’s great aunt was. The director showed me many different rooms with older people doing all kinds of things. At first I was nervous because he was showing me things that I knew my mom wouldn’t like very much, like pool and bowling. But when he showed me the cooking class, I knew he had found the perfect retirement home for my mom.

I wish I had never had to put my mother on assisted living. When her forgetfulness got worse and she became full-blown Alzheimer’s, I was glad I did and equally glad I picked the right assisted living facility for her with the right senior care staff. However, how the staff helped Mom overcome that terrible disease is a story for another day.