What is it like to be old, to live in a nursing home, to deal with the daily frustrations of failing health, to watch one’s independence dwindle away, and to struggle to deal with the challenge of daily existence? How does one ask for help, attract the minimum of attention that one needs, deal with the lack of privacy, the loss of friends and family, combat loneliness and find the courage and resources to meet the demands that each day brings while facing the menacing prospect of ever-narrowing horizons?

The Home, by Marion Caryl Somers, portrays with realism what the struggle is like in emotional and practical terms for the frail elderly to live in a nursing facility.

This often-neglected area of the human condition is a facet of the common experience that has been awaiting its chronicler and publicist. The Home is a case study written in novel form, using as role models such books as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey and Mash, by R. Hooker.

The characters within The Home fall into three categories: (1) the residents; (2) the staff; (3) volunteer workers and visiting friends and family. The residents are themselves divided into two groups: those who function fairly well and those with physical, mental and/or emotional problems and limitations.

The time frame of The Home is a one-year period. The setting is cosmopolitan and urban. Residents come from every walk of life. The thrust of the book highlights interaction among residents, families, volunteers and staff.

The reader of The Home is able to understand what it is like to be in a wheelchair and ask for assistance for life’s daily essentials. Those confined within the institution are left with no option but the nursing home facility. The businesslike manner of administration and its decision-making policies have an impact not only on the clients but on the staff and families as well. Legitimate needs of the geriatric population versus the personal wants and the need for individual freedom are carried out in the story line. The degradation resulting from dependency and decay are clearly enumerated as the story unfolds the routines within an institutional setting. The conflict between administration and workers during the strike period, and the impact the strike has on both clients and staff, is highlighted by the sense of fear and frustration of all concerned.

The subject of death is dealt with from the client’s point of view and the sense of loss that the staff feels and absorbs in their daily experience. One’s own concept of mortality is brought to the fore. The main character, Rosie Hellman, holds on tenaciously to life, and within her capacity lives each day to the fullest.

Monica Cameron, the Activity Director, is the central staff figure. She is a woman with two teenage children who is divorced and attending night school. The relationship that develops between Rosie and Monica is mutually supportive and insightful. Each learns from and admires the other.

The Home deals with the process of coping with daily human needs and where we each are positioned in the continuum of life.

The potential market:

The Home comes at a time when there is a dramatic shift in the percentage of elderly in our population as a consequence of the prolongation of life. About 7.4 percent of adults over age 65 lives in nursing facilities in the United States. The projection for year 2020 is about 16 percent. The problems The Home addresses are relevant to a far greater number of Americans than ever before.

This book is designed to address two target audiences:

1. (A specific appeal to) family members who have to face the soul-searching task of placing a relative or loved one in a nursing facility; and
2. The professional geriatric community.

Marion Caryl Somers received her Ph.D. from the Fielding Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Her doctorate is in Human and Organizational Development, with specialization in Geron-tology, Retirement and Special Populations. In addition, she has had postgraduate training as a New York State Licensed Nursing Home Administrator. Dr. Somers is also a trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

The author was nominated for the President’s Annual Points of Light Award for Outstanding Civic and Community Contributions in 1992. She was featured in The Wall Street Journal in 1993, New York Newsday "Profile" in 1989; she has also appeared on NBC’s Today Show and Eyewitness News and numerous radio programs throughout her career.

Dr. Somers was awarded the Professional Award for Outstanding Achievement in Recreation from the Metropolitan Recreation and Parks Society in 1985, and the Presidential Award from National Parks and Recreation Association and National Therapeutic Recreation Society. She also has received national recognition from Who’s Who in Medicine and Health Care, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who in Industry and Finance.

A well-respected lecturer on a variety of related subjects, the author has designed and presented many seminars, including Care of an Aging Parent or Loved One; Caring for the Caretaker; Counseling Skills; Dying, Death and Bereavement; Geriatrics; Retirement Planning; and Stress Management.

Dr. Somers also operates her own successful Geriatric Care Management business, as well as a franchising business.

http://www.marionsomers.com

Slipping in and out of lucidity was one of her survival arts. Was it in ‘45 in Poland that she’d married the GI? Or ‘46 in Hungary? And how did she get out of Hungary in the first place? How, for that matter, did she get out of her first marriage to the toy maker, who tied ropes around her wrists as if she were one of his puppets, and beat her...

"Some missing keys, Rosie--"

Rosie winked, "I have keys that jingle, jangle, jingle--" she sang in a brassy lilt. "Whoops - I also have an appointment with the foot doctor in an hour. I better get a move on. It’ll take me a half an hour to get there. Damn elevators."

Her eyelids flapped as swiftly as ducks’ feet skidding on water. "The other day I stole a coffee mug. I’ve begun to steal more and more things. Last month I stole a typewriter. I’m clever about it. I plan even the smallest, uh, heist. I don’t want to get caught, not yet. Though maybe that way I’d get some rest."

"You’re the eighth wonder of the world, Rosie."

"And the ninth and the tenth. And don’t you forget it."

Rosie sighed and looked with hopeless patience at the points of her shattered nails. "I’m old. I don’t feel old, but I guess I am. Maybe I’ll get it together when I’m a hundred, and then I’ll spend the next fifty years enjoying myself. My eyes’re in good shape. Good enough for reading and knitting. If I still liked to knit, that is. But I can’t stand the texture of the yarn anymore, there’s something yucky with the way it feels. My eyes... for loving, I don’t know if my eyes’re good enough for loving. Old age, it’s unfiguroutable. Does anybody know?" Rosie settled briefly into an unanswerable silence.

It crossed Monica’s mind that, while Rosie’s eyes may have been sharp enough for knitting, her crippled hands were not. Monica knew enough to let the critical thought stay just where it was, in her mind. The worst thing she could do was point out to residents what they could not do. But where did you draw the line among reality, indomitable feelings, and the memories of a more competent self these feelings insisted on?

It was fascinating, though, and more than a little sad to hear the rationalizations some of the residents came up with to explain away the things they could no longer do. "Something yucky with the way it feels..." So often they sounded like kids making excuses for not finishing their spinach.

Rosie raised her head brightly. "Did I ever tell you how Frank died? My third husband? The ventriloquist? The day after I threw him out he went to a hypnotist to quit smoking. He smoked two and a half packs a day. The next day he put the shotgun in his mouth. In addition to killing him, the recoil broke his wrist." Rosie scratched the green-ink bracelet on her own wrist, as if refastening it over a memory that had come loose and which must be locked securely back in place.

"I’m not ashamed, you know," she continued in a voice that seemed to have returned from a vast, chilly distance. "I’m alive. I know when I’m hungry and cold and in love. When I’m not feeling one of those things, I don’t know anything. Me, I’m certain of my heart and my stomach. He was a perfectionist, Frank was. I don’t think he would’ve shot himself if he’d known it would break his wrist."

Monica scratched her own wrist, a gesture which for her was a signal of internal inventory, a counting of her soul’s components. Things she knew about herself: she looked happy when she slept, serious when she worked, astonished when she spoke. She had a girl’s untroubled skin. The lower lid of her left eye, when she was lonely, trembled - nothing noticeable to the general public, though it threw her off stride.

More deeply, she shared with Rosie the same species of suffering, the knowledge that they’d blown it, that they’d chosen something righteous and stiffly determined, instead of the person with whom, if they’d had a realistic interest in emotional survival, they would have managed to stay. They’d chosen what seemed right rather than submit to - to what? How to describe passion when it became a terrifying necessity, a fate?