Marjorie Bryan's husband died 14 years ago. That was when she lived in Mississippi, and for some time afterward she went on living on her own. Now she's 82. A few years ago, she started having trouble with her balance and taking falls. Bryan has a grown son in Georgia, but moving in with him didn't seem like the answer. It's one thing to have a roof over your head. It's another to have a life. "I didn't want to live with my children," she says. "I think it would bore me to death. I don't drive anymore. If I'd stayed there, I'd be sort of a prisoner during the day."
So Bryan went looking at the alternatives. It turned out there were more than she had imagined. A couple of decades ago, seniors like her who were basically healthy but needed some assistance had limited choices. Among them, they could move in with their grown children, if they had any and were willing to risk the squabbling and sulking. Or they could be bundled off to a nursing home that was like a hospital, only less inviting. All that began to change in the early 1980s with the growth of a new range of living arrangements for older people who want to live as people, not patients, without the physical confinement and spiritual dead air of many nursing homes.
Eventually Bryan came upon the Gardens of Towne Lake in Woodstock, Ga., a landscaped complex where about two dozen seniors live in their own apartments and have round-the-clock staff members to help with daily tasks such as dressing and bathing. There are regular social events. There's a beauty shop. "I love living here," she says. "I got out that first day to learn names."
The late 20th century has done for the retirement years what it did for TV channels and fancy coffee. It multiplied the choices but also the consumer bewilderment. For seniors who want to stay in their homes as long as they can, there is home care for the masses--agencies everywhere that provide nurses and aides who either come by your place on a regular basis or live in. Traditional nursing homes are still widely used, though they are evolving away from long-term care and toward rehabilitative facilities, for short-term stays following hospitalization. The most popular new options are assisted-living facilities. There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 such places in the U.S., according to industry figures. Assisted-living complexes are home to one-fourth of the 2.2 million Americans who live in housing for seniors, according to the American Seniors Housing Association. Some are free-standing facilities. Some are part of continuing-care retirement communities, which offer increasing levels of help and medical supervision as residents move through the years.