Getting lucky without playing the lottery!

UPDATE: My mother-in-law passed away this afternoon about 5:40. Rest in peace, dear.

This is a repost, complete with previous comments, from almost a year ago exactly.

Picking a nursing home for a loved one is hard work.

After sorting through government ratings, touring affordable - and unaffordable - residences, and asking strangers on every street corner, IT Guy and I finally relied on our own experience.

Neither one of us have personally needed a similar facility, but after my mother fell and suffered severe brain damage several years ago, we placed her in a local Methodist home called Crestview.

IT Guy and I had inquired about availability at Crestview during the course of M-I-L’s hospital stay and rehabilitation. Availability in a good nursing home is just another way of getting lucky, only without buying a lottery ticket.

The day before M-I-L was scheduled to leave rehab, a bed at Crestview opened up, so to speak. Since IT Guy had a meeting, I escorted M-I-L to her new home.

It was lunchtime when we arrived. I asked our escorts if she could see her room before she ate. She was worried and I wanted her to be able to enjoy her meal and start the whole experience off on a good note, without reservations about where she would be sleeping that night.

Of course, they said, as they pushed her down the hall, me faithfully following behind the wheelchair. I’d been down this hall many times, daily, in fact, for a full year.

We turned left in front of the dining hall. I waved at several people I’d known during my Mother’s stay. Not that they would remember me, but I remembered them.

By the time our little parade got halfway down the hall, willies started wiggling up my spine. It was all too familiar. I knew the people who lived in the rest of the rooms in this wing. I’d just waved to some of them.

The CNA kept pushing my M-I-L and I kept following, until there was only one room left.

My mother’s old room.

And that’s where we turned, right into my Mother’s old room. Right up to her old bed. Right across from her old roommate.

The only available bed at Crestview was my mother’s old bed. To me, it was like going home.