A Home Away from Home in Cambria, California

When I was a kid growing up in Iowa, I thought only old women with blue hair, forty cats and a husband wintered (their word, not mine) in Florida, Arizona, California, states with no snow. It seemed rather silly to me.

For the past three months, I have wintered in Cambria, a small and sleepy community on the central California coast. In addition, many of my friends, husbands in tow, no cats, have headed for warmer climes and greener golf courses.  We’ve all checked our hair. It’s not blue.

Wintering, in a word, is bliss.

I no longer play golf. The climate in Nevada, where I presently live, is heavenly. Many people come here for the colder months. Why leave? It’s simple. After more than a decade of caregiving and more responsibility than I ever wanted, my well had run dry. When a good friend rented a home overlooking the Pacific and invited me to visit for the winter, I considered the possibility. My family, my friends, and my husband’s professional caregivers encouraged me to go west. In all honesty, I felt they were a bit more encouraging and enthusiastic about my leaving than was necessary.

Cambria, California shore

I loaded my car, leaving only the kitchen sink at home, and made the 8-hour trip to Cambria. Admittedly, the first two weeks were rocky, abandonment guilt ruled each day. Twice, I packed my bags to return home. Constant reassuring calls from the professionals, the daily, “It’s okay, Mom” e-mails from Melissa and my strong-willed friend’s insistent, “Leaving here is not a good idea” mantra, saved each day until I settled down and settled in.

Why is it so hard?  According to 2011 government statistics, 5.4 million Americans now have Alzheimer’s. If you’re over 65, it’s one in every eight.  Although fifteen million of us provide unpaid care to our loved ones, assistance from paid professionals adds another $183 billion dollars to the care costs. This is the good news because, in the future, these numbers will grow astronomically. Most of us in that 15 million group have no training nor idea how to respond to this catastrophic illness. We’re just frightened and grief-stricken, bumbling and stumbling through each new and unexpected challenge. For us, there is usually no offense. It’s all defense. It’s exhausting. So I am not the only caregiver that needs a break, I was just a lucky one.

Hanging out with the neighbors, Elephant Seals

What I discovered in Cambria is that once I gave myself permission to relax and be happy, I could do that very, very well. Each day was a gift. There was no To Do List pasted on the refrigerator. My alarm didn’t ring at 5 a.m. No two to three hours in the car everyday, navigating around Las Vegas.  Since, in Cambria, I’d always walked everywhere, I didn’t even realize gas was over $4.39 a gallon. My telephone was off but for an hour-a-day. The three-bedroom house was quite large so I had my own writing desk, reading chair and office. There wasn’t a minute, day and night, that the doors weren’t open for me to hear the ocean calling. It was soothing.

You get the picture.

So it was with some foreboding last Monday morning, when I left the Cambria city limits to return to reality, my real world, all I’d left behind. Sitting next to me…….. yellow pad, pen in hand, To-Do List.

I was headed back to Henderson, my adopted-home of eight years, located just a blink-of-the-eye and two neon signs from the Las Vegas Strip. It’s a place we’d moved to not by choice or desire but from necessity and process of elimination. Although the move had been a good one, for all the right reasons, leaving our Rocky Mountain home of 25 years has never been easy.

Anthem Country Club, Henderson, Nevada

But something wonderful started to happen after crossing into Nevada, just an hour away from Henderson. I was still doing “happy” very, very well.  How fortunate I was to have been offered a lifeline to heal and re-charge the Mary-motor. (Is this a good time to say, once again, that gasoline in Calli is $4.39 a gallon?) Although I had, to some extent, been selfish for three straight months, I’m a member of that group of 15 million who, just maybe, had earned the right.

Anthem Country Club, Henderson, Nevada

When I turned into Anthem Country Club, my tiny gated community of 1800 houses, it felt like home. For the very first time.  It’s beautiful here this time of year. Everything’s in bloom. Like always, the resident heron was on its rocky perch, on-the-grab for an unsuspecting fish. Our abundant quail coveys were skittering to and fro, fro and to. They’re crazy.

The elderly gentleman who always stands in his driveway, smiling and waving, was “on duty”, smiling and waving. Skateboards and bikes, as always, were scattered dangerously close to the road, causing everyone to take a wide berth. To my chagrin, a neighbor who uses a walker, discovered my front yard is well-positioned to allow her to have a cigarette, twice a day, without being discovered.  As I pulled in my driveway, there she was, cigarette in hand, welcoming me home. Does it get any better than that?

All of you reading this essay either are Me or knows a Me or may sometime be a Me. Although those of us who are losing loved ones to Alzheimer’s know we will not win our battle, may I suggest that you can extend a hand of kindness to help us stay the course that we’ve been handed. You cannot walk in our shoes but you can stay at our side.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.     Martin Scorsese