Like Living on a Cruise--Only Better!

By Ann Burnside Love

This attitude I can understand: Many people liken living in a senior living community to being on a cruise ship. Your meals are provided in a beautiful dining room, there’s an array of entertainment from concerts and shows to speakers on all sorts of subjects, and holiday celebrations, all of which — differently from a cruise — you may invite family and friends without also arranging for their travel!

What's it really like, those first days?

By Ann Burnside Love

For weeks I‘d imagined the scene: On my first full day as a new retirement community resident, I would leave my pile of boxes and go down in the elevator for lunch, and walk the curving hall, with big windows overlooking the lovely pond with fountains and water lilies, to the dining room entrance. Study the lunch menu in the lighted case for the first time, then walk into the dining room and find a seat. By myself. Surrounded by examining eyes.

I’ve been on my own for a lot of years: Decades ago, as a young widow, I founded a little marketing company that grew way beyond anyone’s expectations. Traveled the country to clients alone, been in professional meetings with total strangers. Circulated and made new acquaintances in crowded rooms. Eaten in lots of restaurants alone. Confident and independent, you bet. But now it would be different. I would be a newcomer, no longer in charge. This entrance …

Do I Stay, or Do I Go?

By Ann Burnside Love

One might have thought that I, of all people, would not have hesitated when it was time to move into a retirement community. As the founder of a senior living marketing company, I’d visited scores of communities, led the planning and fulfillment of their marketing needs, and along the way written tens of thousands of words about them.

So I knew very well how to recognize when it was decision-making time for myself. That didn’t mean I would decide, of course. (“I’m not ready yet!”) Oh yes, I knew the decision-making and moving drills very well — and how to advise others! However, my whole background had made me, shall we say, very independent.