Leaving Home: Stages 1 & 2

Leaving Home?

First Stage

Not sure of the percentage of elders who downsize or trade locations as a part of aging, but it must be a lot of us as we hear so much about downsizing and moving.

And, here it is. I’m 68 and he’s 56—already too disabled rationally to keep doing his lifetime career as a horticultural specialist (gardener in common verbiage). He had a hip replaced last December and by April, I knew we were in the short count for him at his job.

So—I began to look at options.

1) Our house is paid for, so we stay in Seattle (most expensive cost of living by some standards) and I contribute my paltry Social Security check, continuing to earn my paltry salary…working for the rest of my life. Sadly, this option falls to pieces when we look at the monumental difficulties getting accepted onto disability and the price of health insurance. On to the next option.

2) He continues to work and to take pain killers and get steroid shots until he breaks the new hip or is in so much pain that everything including our marriage breaks down. Next option, please.

3) We move to another home—worth less than our current Seattle home and live on the proceeds until we get some funds from his disability insurance or, at least, his retirement IRA (not available until he’s 59 ½--so three and a half more years). Depends on the house…cost, whether it serves our purposes adequately, and makes us not too sad to leave the home we’ve massaged in 30 years to suit us quite well. Sigh. Best option.

Then I started looking at the available homes.

1) Nothing in Seattle. Anything cheaper than our house is either tiny, a trailer, or a Meth house. Next option.

2) Checked up and down the West Coast…from Bellingham to Oregon. Wow, still too expensive, even for the tiny, the trailers, and the Meth houses.

3) My grandfather spent part of his childhood before coming to Seattle in Pomeroy, Washington. He loved the Palouse and I now have the gorgeous picture of it painted for him by my mother. So far, so good. Checked house prices. Yay! Considerably cheaper than everything west of the mountains.

A few months later, things got more critical. Time to visit those Zillow houses I’d found online.

Oh, my good grief and gravy. The drive is seven hours. But the Palouse area is magical. “I could live here,” I repeat dreamily to my husband as he drives. But he is all caught up in the practicalities like his two elderly parents on the west side of the mountains and our lame old cars making this drive.

We look at Pomeroy and find it depressing…lots of people unemployed and homes often in disrepair.

I’d also looked at some close neighboring towns, and we had discovered a favorite home in Dayton—about twenty minutes from Pomeroy.

We like Dayton—discrete and pleasant and the house too, when we see it in person.

This is a possibility—but the words of a local woman ring in my ears: “Well, if you want a music CD, your best bet is to go thirty minutes west or an hour east.”

Hike up your big kid panties.

Second Stage

Time to commit: We engage realtors in Seattle and Dayton, spend a month “staging” our 1954 house, which means getting rid of a fifth of our possessions accumulated in 30 years. Our mantra: Would you rather have this or a happier life? Life always wins. We spend precious funds having the crawlspace, attic, and roof spruced up. Lots of painting, mending, polishing wood floors, cutting back plants, taking excess to the dump, refurbishing the waterfall. In the process, we get rid of one of our favorite things. And, our coworkers, family, and friends are not pleased—sad, angry, or inconvenienced by our defection. This is not a process without collateral damage.

Realtors, everyone, says we’ll sell in a week—five to eight days. Time to do a contingency contract on the Dayton house. First, I want to rent it for a month, so I pry the $1550 for first and damage from my little purse, biting my lip.

Open houses—cats not pleased. U-haul to Dayton where we are both enchanted and horrified by the reality of the house we liked. After two trips and four nights, we recognize this one will not do for us…too old, too many things to fix, too many stairs between floors for a guy with bad joints. We make a fourth trip to see more homes, have a miscommunication with the realtor, and end up responsible for a tank of oil to heat the elder house we’ve only spent four nights in. Hiking those big kid panties, we note that now our Seattle home has been on the market for about a month with no offers. It’s autumn and the market has suddenly “gone soft”—many owners cutting prices. The next day, my elder car spits up its engine and our last budgeted money goes for a better used one. The following day, it snows and I-90 is backed up for hours...our only route to move between homes.

The next day, my husband’s long-term disability insurance company okays paying him sixty percent of his earnings. With sighs of relief, we toss cat toys across the shiny bare wood floors and tell the realtor to stop listing us.

So, here we are with an imperfect but improved house, $10,000 poorer, but appreciative that we have a paid off home close to every kind of resource including our friends, family, and my jobs. We count blessings that will follow as our income declines—assistance with property taxes and some utilities, for example. COBRA health care for him, Medicare for me. We decide to ignore the imperfections in all these things, the future realities we may have to face, the change of mind we may have to make at a later date.

For now, we have a reprieve—doing our best to make this house, this little section of Seattle suit our needs the best they can. This has been an expensive lesson, and we still don’t know the outcome. However, we’ve had a lot of enjoyment in the home restoration, the travel, the dream of a vintage house…and the relief of giving it up to cuddle up in our familiar habitat for a while yet, at least.

Ariele Huff hosts the Sharing Stories website and is a third generation Seattleite still living in Seattle…so far.

SHARING STORIES is a weekly column for and about the 50 plus crowd living in the Puget Sound region. Send your stories and photos to ariele@comcast.net. Tell local or personal stories; discuss concerns around aging and other issues; share solutions, good luck, and reasons to celebrate; poems are fine too. Pieces may be edited or excerpted. We reserve the right to select among pieces. Photos are always a plus and a one-sentence bio is requested (where you live, maybe age or career, retired status, etc.). SHARING STORIES is featured on www.northwestprimetime.com, the website for Northwest Prime Time, a monthly publication for baby boomers, seniors, retirees, and those contemplating retirement. The newspaper can be found in the greater Seattle area and other Puget Sound locations. For more information, call 206-824-8600 or visit www.northwestprimetime.com. To find other SHARING STORIES articles on this website type "sharing stories" in the search function above.