Reply to Who do you need most post-retirement? Siblings, friends or children?

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[quote=Anonymous]I’m only 42, so what do I know…but currently have parents in their late 70s caring for their mothers who are in their late 90s. So my advice is observational and considerations for next stages for them.

Both of my parents settled where they were raised, and both of their parents retired and left the state (for opposite sides of the country). I moved “to the city” but was still 40min from where I grew up.

My parents retired in their early 60s to a much more rural area that became a 4-5hr drive for me or train ride.

They have lived where they are now for close to 20years. In that time, despite joining a church, and various volunteer groups and social groups never really developed strong community ties that turned into friendships. Instead it just became that much harder to maintain their lifelong friendships that they moved away from. Some of it, I now see is they moved to an area that was very socially different from where they had lived before and just didn’t have enough in common with people of their age where they landed OR stimulating arts and cultural activities, museums, concerts etc without a lot of extra work.

The next thing that happened was about 12 years ago, they moved their mothers in and nearby as they could no longer live alone and were too far to regularly check in on. One 90yo happily essentially became a shut in, the other much more social, did her best to make friends, make the best of it and missed the community and weather she had previously lived in for 30 some odd years.

Being in a rural area, that you didn’t live your life in and have strong ties with the community imho has been very difficult for my parents to navigate support, resources and access to referrals for home aids and health care. Made more complicated by also living too far for me to assist in anyway AND locking them in to not being able to travel and see those friends they moved away from, or their grandchildren accept for when we travel to see them. (We have since left the city and are now 7hrs away).

They are planning to downsize and move in the next 1-3years and will be in their early 80s. Comparison: both of their parent sets had already been living very full, travel filled, friend filled retirements in their new locals by that age for 20+ years.

I am strongly encouraging my parents to choose their next move to a more suburban neighborhood with lots of resources in short distances about halfway closer to us, and near some other family to hope that they can assimilate into and create community bonds as quickly as possible for however short or longer they have before they can no longer live independently. At 80yo, it is a gamble that is a 10year plan.

I’d be happy for them to move to us and integrate them into our day to day but they are uninterested in that option, so I keep clear boundaries as to what support I am able to provide from afar. [/quote]

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