"I'm Sorry, Mom 2: A 50-Something Single Man's Caregiving Struggle—Group Home Edition"

2022/10/18

Eight years have passed since my mother developed dementia at the age of 80. For the first two and a half years, I cared for her at home, but as her symptoms progressed, it became unmanageable. In January 2017, I moved her into a group home, a facility where elderly people with dementia live together in a community.

I compiled the various aspects of home caregiving into a book titled "I'm Sorry, Mom: A 50-Something Single Man's Caregiving Struggle" (Nikkei BP). Five and a half years have passed since then. This book is the sequel, documenting the various experiences in a group home.

Probably few people who do not have an elderly family member with dementia know what a group home is really like.

However, once my mother actually moved in and I began visiting her, I found it to be a very stimulating "front line." The long-term care insurance system, which started in 2000, has produced certain results despite various problems. One of those results was the group home—a facility where elderly people with dementia who have lived in the area gather in small groups to live in a home-like environment.

What amazed me most was how much caregiving techniques had advanced since the time I saw off my own grandparents. The communication techniques used by the group home staff—the skill of interacting in a way that allows elderly people with dementia to live with peace of mind—seemed to have reached the level of a work of art.

That said, the problems never end. Life in a group home is a continuous cycle where as soon as one problem is solved, the next one arises. In that regard, it was no different from caregiving at home.

And no matter how hard one tries to create a bright life, there is no changing the fact that a group home is a place where people spend the final moments of their lives, and most will depart from there to the next world.

In this book, I aimed to provide readers with as objective an overview as possible of the "present" of such group homes. After all, no one is immortal. Everyone has the potential to become a resident of a group home someday.

"This is a book for you, who will one day grow old and die"—that is my unvarnished, honest feeling.

"I'm Sorry, Mom 2: A 50-Something Single Man's Caregiving Struggle—Group Home Edition"

Shinya Matsuura

Nikkei BP

304 pages, 1,760 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.