Communal Living

Bing and I became empty nesters quite a while ago. I think it was about 1995 when the last of our three sons married and moved out. But about three weeks ago, we doubled our household members and have been sharing the homestead. My title of this post suggests living in a commune and that evokes images of a large compound with healthy looking adults and tons of kids happily coexisting and sharing the living space, the meals and the work. But our communal living is a little less intensive and in need of a lot less coordination because it's only four here, not fifty or sixty. It has been a pretty comfortable transition and will last a couple more weeks. Our fellow residents are Bing's 98 year old mom and his sister, Sue, familiarly known as Grandma Milli and Aunt Susie. For the last several years, Sue has been a more and more needed caretaker for Milli in their home town of Minneapolis. Milli lives in a third floor apartment with no elevator and Sue, of course, does the grocery shopping and carrying, etc. The stairs became a big challenge due to Sue's arthritic and painful left knee and the diagnosis led toward a need for a replacement knee. To make a long story short, the best solution seemed to be that Sue and Milli move in here for the knee operation and the rehab necessary afterward. And, so far, so good. Sue had the same surgeon as Bing and before this surgeon joined the medical world he had worked as an engineer making prosthetic parts, so he seems to do a remarkably good job with the placement and function of the part. Sue is doing very well and is now working on strengthening the recovering knee and regaining the ability to stair climb. The communal living has been fun and the biggest change is that we do an awful lot of shouting at each other. Milli is what would assume is almost stone deaf. The best way to communicate with her is face to face about six inches away from her ear and even then it often turns into a version of charades trying to get a word across. She is also legally blind but can see somewhat so the proper lighting is important too. It is quite precious to see her nod off in her rocker basking in the sun like a contented kitten. For a few days she wasn't feeling well and I noticed that this stage of her life felt to me like those early days of infancy where you checked the baby to see if he was breathing and you felt a deep deep love and concern for this oh so dependent being. But she bounced back nicely with a returned appetite and vigor for her pleasures of audio books, card games with Sue and the distinct pleasure of living with her son and daughter at this stage of her life. Our communal living will go a couple more weeks but the memories will last a lifetime........I've added some pictures of summer flowers as we say goodbye to them for the year. We're finally getting to the freezing point at night but it has been a nice long stretch of not so bad weather.....