My parents’ honeymoon abode — after spending their actual honeymoon in Havana; it was a long time ago! — was a small apartment on the top floor of a three-family house owned by my grandparents in Newark. This lasted several years, through the birth of two (of ultimately four) children. Aunt Agnes and Uncle Vic lived on the ground floor (until their two children become adults and flew the coop), while Gramma and Grampa held down the middle. The three homes were tied together not only by a grand oak front staircase, but also by a rickety back staircase where everything important happened, usually at 80 decibels. You always had a babysitter and a home-cooked meal. Life was frugal, by today’s standards, but good. The whole house smelled perpetually of competing gravies from the three kitchens. (For North Jersey Italians, pasta sauce is not “sauce.” It is “gravy.”)

When Grampa got sick in the mid-1970s, he was cared for at home. There was always someone around to help him bathe, use the bathroom, and so on. He wasn’t in good shape; but he was never lonely.

Fast forward to the late 90s, when my Dad died. Mommy was left alone in her suburban ranch. Although she had good friends and neighbors, she was lonely and bereft. The four of us children all still lived in New Jersey, but far enough away to make daily visits implausible given our work and family obligations. It would have been nice if we all lived together in a multi-family home. Visiting and caring for each other would have been so much easier. Even though I had young kids, I would often ride the bus from my New York law firm job to Mom’s house to spend the night during the months following Dad’s passing. It was a tough time.

Fortunately for Mom, she had a good friend of 40 years, Charlie, a wonderful man whose wife had also passed. Mom and Charlie married four years after Dad’s passing. After several years of wedded bliss living at Mom’s, they sold their houses and moved to a very nice Senior Living Facility (as Tony Soprano called it when responding to his Mother’s taunt that “my son put me in a home”). The deal was you pay a hefty entrance fee in exchange for a lovely independent-living apartment. If and when you need it, you can move to Assisted Living, and then to Nursing Care, on the same premises and rather seamlessly. The newlyweds had each other plus many new friends. Almost heaven.

It worked well. Too well. Charlie soon became ill. He skipped Assisted Living and went straight to Nursing Care. The good news was that Mom was able to visit and care for Charlie during his final months without getting in a car. The bad news is that, after Charlie passed, Mom was alone. Again. Surrounded by lovely friends. But alone.

Several years after Charlie’s passing, Mom’s Parkinson’s Disease started to kick in, big time. Not the constant shaking variety, but the heavy limbs, difficult to walk kind. Despite good care, medicine and physical therapy, Mom deteriorated steadily. She needed a walker, and then a scooter. And then she really couldn’t manage either of those. She needed us more than ever.

We “kids” (the youngest of us is 60) visit often. But we don’t live around the corner, and of course we have the competing obligations of work, children and grandchildren.

In January 2020, an unrelated illness sent Mom to the hospital. She was released to the Nursing Care Facility for physical therapy. And then COVID hit. Visits were restricted, and then banned. Our Governor sent COVID patients to such Nursing Facilities. Thousands died as a result.

Mom was weak, and we thought she wouldn’t last long. But she survived. She turns 92 next month. We can now visit, but still with restrictions. Caring for her is difficult for the staff, as she needs to be hoisted by a special lift for changing and bathing. And the Facility is short-staffed.

Although we discuss the possibility, moving Mom to one of our homes would be extremely difficult. She requires much care, and much physical strength to care for.

So Mom remains at the Nursing Facility. She is cared for pretty well. We visit often. But she says “I’m ready to go home now,” not realizing that she is “home now.” That hurts, especially when we have to inevitably end our visit and she says “Don’t leave me. Please take me with you.”

That’s the status quo. Not terrible, but not great.

The moral of the story is to think about these things far in advance. Knowing what we know now, I think it would have been better if Mom had moved in with one of us after Charlie died, so we could be together more. That’s really not possible now.

That three-family house in Newark is looking pretty good.