Getting Rid of Dad's Boredom By Finding the Right Assisted Living Facility

If there is any state of being that my dad absolutely can not stand, it is boredom. All other emotions are perfectly acceptable, but not boredom. The man was always active. Growing up in my family, we did not just watch TV. Dad had to constantly talk about what was happening on the screen. I missed a lot of TV shows as a child because my dad was talking about them rather than watching them. Even if he was just reading the morning paper, Dad had to talk about the news. It did not seem to bother him that we had no idea what he was talking about as we had not read the paper.

That's what made me so sad after my dad had his hip replacement. He was bored. The only time he got out of the house was for physical therapy sessions. The doctor said the therapy would never be able to give him back his full mobility, not at his age and in his health. As cliche as it sounds, my dad really did become one of those old people who sit around all day blankly watching reruns of Matlock and Wheel of Fortune. He was bored. Things might have been different it was football season, but it was spring. I could not stand to see my dad bored.

I Had to work so I could not be there all the time to talk to him, not that he wanted to talk to me at that point. With his hip being the way it was, he needed help with little things like putting his pants on too. I hated to do it, but I decided that I needed to find an assisted living facility for my dad. I just hoped that I could find one where he wasn't bored all the time.

I toured what seemed like hundreds of facilities. The residents in most seemed either as bored as my dad or way too active for him. Sure, before his hip replacement, he might have loved an independent living facility that was full of other seniors taking dance classes and going on long walks, but that would not work now. Even though I told my them about my dad's situation, so many facilities insisted on telling me how active all of their residents were.

Finally, after a long search -- it seemed endless -- I found an assisted living facility that got my dad's unique situation. Sure, they showed me lots of seniors dancing and bowling and doing all sorts of other extremely active things. It was also an independent living facility so that was to be expected. However, they also took the time to show me their assisted living residents who were in similar situations as my dad's. What really got me was the movie screening room where a group of residents were watching some old John Wayne film and talking about it just like my dad used to do. They even let me talk to the assisted living and the independent living residents to see how they liked the place. Turns out they all loved it.

Now, I just had to convince my dad to go into a retirement home. As you might expect, he resisted and threw a fit. I think I heard him say, "No, retirement home" at least one hundred times in the space of two weeks. I'm not sure how I did it, maybe it was the nagging, but I finally got him to just go with me to visit the place. He started the visit in a bad mood and was predictably determined to hate the place. Then, something happened. The same group of residents that I had seen in the movie room, whisked my dad away from me and the tour guide.

To this day, I do not know what those residents said to my dad or what they all did. All that I know is dad returned a couple of hours later and said, "I'm staying." Of course, it was not that easy and it took a couple of weeks to get everything arranged for dad to move in. But once he did, that assisted living facility became his new home and I got my old dad back. He wasn't bored any more.