Thanks for your patience.

I've been AWOL since late last week, when I learned we would be able to fast-track a crisis nursing-home placement for my mom, living alone with advanced ALZ in the absence of my Dad, who passed away June 24. It's very early days, so we can't tell how Mom will adjust to losing her home of 57 years. The suburban Scarborough home where I was raised was on a plot of land with 44 trees and two enormous vegetable gardens. It was Mom who financed the purchase, with her disciplined accumulation of War Bonds. 

It's not too early to thank the Ontario government-funded caregivers who provided superb home care, though, or close friends Allison Nowlan and Lynni Bronsten, without whose open-ended support of both Mom and myself would have made this traumatic transition impossible, rather than merely near-unbearable.

I wish you all such selfless friends. As for the home care-givers, my parents became fast friends with these efficient yet affectionate companions, as perhaps half a dozen CCAC contracted health professionals rotated through our lives over the past five years. Yes, your tax dollars at work. A bargain, I would say, acknowledging my bias. I've always been proud to live here. Now I feel even more grateful than usual to be a lifelong Ontarian.

  

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

Tough calls David. Your mother is fortunate to have such committed friends stepping up to the plate in such difficult times.
And thank you for the positive comments about the CCAC services. Hopefully, as budgets get tighter, their new standardized assessment processes will help them provide even better service out of every dollar provided to them by Queens Park.

[johnnyk]

I wish her well, David.
My dad was in a similar situation and once we got him placed he had a very happy last few years with thanks to Veterans Affairs Canada.
Good friends and family are the best things in life.

[dolive]

Many thanks for your kind wishes. I do wish, WW, that those of us benefiting from the CCAC and other government services most competently and efficiently provided by government would speak out on that. I'll be writing the Premier to express my appreciation about the smooth hand-off from my parents' OHIP-covered physicians and specialists, to the taxpayer-financed CCAC home care, and now to the government-subsizided nursing home (Ontario picks up roughly two-thirds of the cost per patient, and more in cases of financial distress).
For all that, Johnnyk is right that the it does all come down to people. For me it's friends rather than family, as I'm an only child and so was Dad. By this late stage in our collective lives, there's a dearth of family in our situation. The "system" is more humane than we credit, we dwell on the inevitable SNAFUs. Just the same, it's the friends and family who must step forward and make sure that system is working for the afflicted loved one, and of course provide our own personal balm. I'm so glad by Dad's service to our country was reciprocated. Even this seems slight recompense for those who served, the bare minimum of what we owe our men and women in uniform.