Want to hear some good news?  Husband’s Aunt is headed home tomorrow!  She’s been out of her apartment for close to 6 weeks.  First in the hospital for a week, then here for a week, then back in the hospital for another week and now 3 weeks in a nursing home doing physical therapy and getting her strength back.  She’s a very determined woman, and appears to be stronger than ever.   We’re grateful for all the care and physical challenges she’s experienced in the nursing home.

But what an experience a nursing home is, even for me who was only visiting, much less for a competent, sharp and vital woman who just happens to have some issues with her balance and stamina.  It’s not a place I’d want anyone to have to live in, yet it was the place that helped her get strong again.  I have mixed emotions about the whole thing.  She, on the other hand, vows never to go back.

Last Monday I was sitting with her in the lobby watching people come and go, a main source of entertainment for us, when a little lady in a wheelchair rolled over to talk to my Aunt.  Seems she lives in the same building that my Aunt lives in, though they didn’t know each other.  She had heard Aunt V was headed home, and she stopped by to say goodbye and to talk a bit about life “on the outside.”

She was facing a difficult decision; whether to go back home to her apartment, to stay at the nursing home or go to live with her daughter.  She said that the staff told her she could do whatever she wished, though they hadn’t been able to get her walking again.  I asked her what she really wanted to do.  She wants to go back to her apartment, and you could tell she was feeling sad that Aunt V was going back and she wasn’t sure she ever would.

She said she’d been out of her apartment for over a month and after being in the nursing home for that long she had ‘lost the courage’ she had to live on her own again.  She was afraid of going home and living alone, yet she didn’t want to give that independence up either.  We talked for quite awhile, and I encouraged her to be brave, but I don’t know what she will ultimately decide to do.  I felt sad for her as she wheeled herself back to her room.  With a little bit of assistance she might be able to live on her own for awhile longer.  Who knows.

I hope when I’m her age I can hang onto my courage and take the risk to do what I really want to do.  Heck.  Even these days it often takes courage to take a risk and do what you really want to do.  I’m giving Aunt V credit for going after something she wanted.

Even at age 95.