Column: Take your friends with you when you go

Sooner or later we are all going to end up either in some kind of assisted living facility or with extensive home care. I wanted to share a particular success story with our Daily Record readers.

About 20 years ago, a particular group of mostly retired friends got used to meeting for lunch and tennis on Fridays once a month. It was a cordial and happy gathering.

These couples had been seeing each other on and off for many years.

They went to the same parties, had many of the same friends and lived relatively close to each other. They were a group, a micro-community.

The ladies were the first to bring up the subject — they decided that it would be both convenient and friendly to take this community of friends with them when they made the eventual move to some sort of assisted living.

What these ladies sought was to keep their friends close, even if it was just nearby, rather than being injected into a community of aging strangers. “Why,” they thought to themselves, “should we give up all these long harmonious relationships just because we’re getting older?”

It was not a sudden decision; it took several years for most couples to “climb on board.”

They set about searching for elderly communities that suited them. They were all different people with different needs, different levels of income, different faiths and, most of all, different interests. Whatever site they eventually chose would have to accommodate all of their various likes and dislikes.

It was important that any place they chose allowed for them to be able to live as they were now for a time, independently with their own plans and their own lives with the option of more care and special facilities later.

SEE ALSO: 6 tips for choosing an assisted living community http://dailyre.co/1Ky0pRi 

A good optional meal plan was high on the list as was being able to live within walking distance of each other. And, not a nursing home but a retirement community or neighborhood with nearby hospital and nursing facilities that would allow them to take on aging in easy steps.

For some, a key feature was being close to their local children, not so close as to become the default baby sitter, but close enough for easy visits. That meant having enough space to entertain their children’s visits.

On that long list of “must have’s” were lots of things like one-floor dwellings with wide doorways, with the ability to add safety features like steadying bars to showers as they needed them. Interesting places with interesting activities were key to their planning, as was good restaurants and great grocery stores nearby.

When the men got around to planning weekend bus trips to likely sites, it began to occur to everyone in that community that they were becoming a powerful contingent who could join a community and have their own say in its operation.

At their eventual destination they did just that. As they slowly migrated, they established a new library, built a greenhouse and because they got in on the “ground floor” of the community, they had a lot of say about the chef, dining and other amenities and conveniences. They set rules, organized activities and negotiated powerfully with the management.

Most importantly, they had their friends around them as they aged.

Instead of trailing around after their children, they had close friends who could pick up something at the store, or give them a ride to the movies, or maybe just some company for the afternoon.

As they aged, were widowed, and fell to the various maladies and afflictions of aging they were surrounded by their fellows going through much of the same thing.

As you may have guessed, my parents were one of the nine couples in this story and, if anything, it teaches me that planning is key to having a happy and productive old age.

I have heard several tentative plans among my various groups of friends — everything from buying shared land so everyone can build their individual homes nearby, to sharing voluminous mansions or apartment buildings.

I hope these come to fruition as successfully as the plans my parents adopted for their retirement. It certainly made them more comfortable and secure, as well as happy and well-settled.

Tell us your plans for retirement. Email EAbreu@GannettNJ.com.

Prentiss Gray’s weekly column will provide tips and advice on how to make your life better in Morris County. Read “Domestitech” every Thursday in The Good Life.