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Peace and Acceptance in a New Emerald City
To be frank, 2007 has not been one
of my favorite years. Not only have I had to overcome the cerebral crisis
of “turning 60,” but I also have had to make frequent trips to
Kentucky to help my sister tend to my mother whose declining health has
resulted in frequent hospital stays and multiple moves (from her home to
assisted living to rehabilitation centers to a nursing home). In addition
to making tough decisions and providing loving support for Mom, the sheer
amount of paperwork required of us by the mind-boggling bureaucracies of
Medicare, supplemental health plans, long-term care insurance, physical
therapists, drug coverers and countless medical providers has made me all
the more personally anxious about getting older.
Unlike my mother but like many
fellow/sister gay people (and quite a few straight friends), I won’t
have children to turn to for help when I no longer can manage my own
affairs. And, believe me, financial affairs get more and more complicated
the longer you live. Even if you have banked a reasonable amount of
savings, it can disappear very quickly if someone is not available to
become your personal financial caregiver, double- and triple-checking to
make sure you are getting all that you are entitled to at every turn of
the system’s screws. Even then, the costs can soon absorb a lifetime of
careful preparation for a rainy day.
A lot of us baby boomers have
discovered that we face an especially rocky future unless we band together
to create alternative means of managing our late-life years—just as we
have fought to create social change throughout our lifetimes.
In recent months I have been
approached by two different groups of friends—one primarily straight,
the other gay and lesbian—to get involved in plans to create our own
small-group senior living homes. The idea has been in the back of my mind
ever since I first wrote a CAMPTalk column about it nearly a decade ago.
(Yes, this winds up my ninth year of doing these columns, and I look
forward to sharing more ideas both serious and silly with you for a tenth.
Sorry that this piece isn’t typically frivolous holiday fare, but
perhaps addressing the topic now will lead to happier holidays for many of
us in the years to come.)
John and I have decided to join
with a group of gay and lesbian friends, all participants in our social
networking Triangle Group in the Mount Dora area of Central Florida, to
pursue the concept of establishing our own elder-care residential complex.
One of the organizing women, a nurse with experience in senior care, has
come up with a great name for our compound: The Emerald City. And local
gay realtors are scouting affordable properties (with appropriate zoning)
for our group’s investment. The first meeting of our board of directors
was scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend, and—though enthused —we are no
Pollyannas about the difficulties we face in pulling together a viable
plan.
In addition to per-member
investment shares and construction costs, we face many hurdles in
acquiring licensing that would allow medical personnel and caregivers to
serve us at home and make it possible to be covered by insurance plans
(from long-term care to Medicare). We know it will take years to
accomplish our goals, whether we end up with a small-group facility for
fewer than two dozen folks or a much larger development for scores of
members.
As a start, we are studying other
pioneering gay retirement communities that are sprouting up coast to
coast. The work of the Gay & Lesbian Association of Retiring Persons (GLARP)
has been most helpful. If you’re interested in this issue, be sure to
visit the GLARP website at www.gaylesbianretiring.org.
It includes a list of existing and planned communities, including The
Palms of Manasota in Sarasota, Carefree Cove in the Blue Ridge Mountains
of North Carolina, RainbowVisions in Santa Fe, the Stonewall Community in
Boston, and forthcoming facilities in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Featured on the website is a GLARP-sponsored
campus being developed in Palm Springs. The architectural plans are very
attractive, and the concept is to include “senior residential housing
for healthy adults over 55, an assisted living center and a skilled
nursing center where the LGBT community can age in peace and in
acceptance.”
The keywords here are “peace and
acceptance.”
Not all conventional senior-living
centers are gay friendly. In fact some are downright hostile. In a
remarkable must-read article, “Aging and Gay, and Facing Prejudice in
the Twilight,” published in The New York Times on October 9, writer Jane
Gross documents stories of elderly homosexuals in nursing homes who have
been “disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from
hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide. Some have seen
their partners and friends isolated. Others live in fear of the day when
they are dependent on strangers for the most personal care.”
Count me among them. Not only do
childless senior gay men and women require help from trusted caregivers to
handle financial matters and paperwork, we also should be able to surround
ourselves with nonjudgmental people with whom we can share memories, laugh
and make the most of the later stages of our lives. (Just imagine: group
sing-alongs of “I Will Survive” and “We Are Family.”)
As for us baby boomers, we are also
the kind of people who will want a voice in the policies and procedures of
our residences; an ownership/membership share of a relatively small group
home among friends would allow us to stay involved as long as our health
allows. Perhaps the time for hippie communes has finally come.
Though John and I are working on
the concept down here in Florida, our former hometown of Rehoboth Beach is
also a perfect venue for a gay/lesbian senior-living facility. And if it
were to be developed under the experienced auspices of CAMP Rehoboth,
I’m sure it would be one of the finest in the world.
I’m sure we’ll have more to say
on this topic in the year(s) to come. Meanwhile, have a happy and hopeful
holiday season!
Bill Sievert can be reached at billsievert@earthlink.net.
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