Paying to make transition for seniors less stressful
By Jan Ferris Heenan, Sacramento Bee
It could easily have been a two-Tylenol day when Jill Brackmann’s 83-year-old mother had to pack up her Carmichael home of 55 years last spring. The house sold within a week, mom was in a wheelchair and a lifetime of memories was stashed in rafters and closets.
Instead, Joan MacTaggart’s big move turned out to be a party of sorts, said Brackmann, an only child who lives in south Sacramento.
“We had a bottle of wine and ordered pizza. People stopped by all day,” she recalled. “My mother, who’s very coherent, said, ‘I kept waiting to be sad and I wasn’t,’ and it was because Lee took care of the business so we could process the emotions. If I had had to be responsible for everything in her house, it would not have been that way.”
The Brackmanns contracted with Lee Mahla, a professional organizer whose Sacramento company, Get OrderLee, specializes in helping seniors downsize their households and move – usually into independent or assisted-living facilities. As baby boomers age, and live ever longer, the number of companies like Mahla’s is on the upswing, both nationally and across the Sacramento region.
The National Association of Senior Move Managers started with 22 members in 2002, tripled by 2006 and now counts nearly 700 companies in the United States, as well as start-ups in Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, according to Mary Kay Buysse, executive director.
“The demographics are just so compelling; 10,000 (American) baby boomers turn 65 every day,” said Buysse, from her suburban Chicago headquarters. “It’s not an easy time for the older adults or for the family when mom or dad is told by the physician that they can’t live alone anymore. It used to be such a crisis point for the family. Not as much anymore.”
What a great idea! It’s scary just to think about the downsizing. My mother would ask each of her children and grandchildren to tell her what they would like as a memory from her home. She had these little sticky back labels and put our names on the back. Everyone knew what others were getting. We didn’t want much, just a memory of her and her home. The day before she moved into an assisted living unit we had a big dinner party, pot luck. The house was crowded with her family to all say good-by to Nonna’s house. She stood up and gave a little speech and started crying, saying, “I never knew what a blessing grandchildren could be.” Her grandchildren each said something about a memory, many things humorous. One thing that was shared was they she wanted them how to work and maintain a home. Some she had painted, others she had garden. Her grandson said, it was so hard to work because she had broken tools. It was very funny at the time. Yes, time marches on. We need to prepare! It’s not as easy as it seems……..