Wikipedia defines it as “extra-care housing or retirement living which allows residents over 55 or 60 to live independently…with staff on hand 24 hours a day to provide personal care. Assisted living exemplifies the shift from ‘care as service’ to ‘care as business’ in the broader health care arena predicted more than three decades ago.”
Right after my birth, I entered the assisted living home operated by my parents. They fed me and changed my diapers. They healed my illnesses and provided clean sheets and towels. Lots of free advice. When I was three, Mama’s father came to live with us as another person needing assisted living until he died in the back bedroom when I was seven. I assisted in his death by sitting at his bedside for what seemed like forever because I still remember it as if it were yesterday.
My grandmother on Daddy’s side, who assisted my birth as midwife, had a kindergarten in her home and helped over two dozen of us each day get ready for primary school. From grades one to twelve, some of the most noble teachers incorporated assisted living principles to help us get ready for “independent living”.
But I have yet to experience such a thing. Even after college and graduate school and launching into a career, in every place of my life, I have always been dependent on so many other people or institutions to become me, myself and I. Now in the autumn years, I feel even more intertwined in the family and community that assists my free-range living every day of my life. And if it weren’t for taxes and government spending where would we be: no education, no medical care, no defense, no clean air, no roads. Our living is always assisted to the extent that there’s not a single self-made independent person anywhere.
When Grandaddy died in the back bedroom, I was there holding his frail hand. I felt the life going out of him. My first experience of assisted dying. One of his favorite phrases was “much obliged”, and that term captures our lifetimes of gratitude for all those who assisted us and helped us on the journey as a way of keeping the circle unbroken from generation to generation.