My first day: Moving into an assisted-living apartment

The fireplace clock ticks away Patricia Williams' last minutes before she moves to an assisted-living apartment, connected to a nursing home. Her thoughts, a mixture of excitement and dread all morning, flip to dread again when she realizes her possessions are being loaded onto a truck.

"Oh, I don't want to look," says Williams, 85, clamping a hand over her mouth with a quick, submissive shrug. "I hate to think about it."

But the day has come for Williams to step deeper into the world of continuing care, trading some of her lifelong freedoms so she can depend on other people for safety and socialization. Like all numbers dealing with aging these days, the number of people who will make similar moves is going to bloat. Nearly half of people over age 65 enter nursing homes as they near the exit of life and the population of people 65 and older grows by 650 a day.

The number that worries Williams today, however, is one — and that's her.

For 52 years, she lived with her husband on Beacon Hill, raising three children and the occasional golf club at nearby Jefferson Park Golf Club. Williams swam across Lake Washington as a girl. On her first day as a Rosie the Riveter in World War II, she marched across Boeing's Plant 2 in South Seattle in search of a "left-handed" wrench, only to be told she'd been had.

"Oh, brother, I thought, I'm in for it."

That part of her has not changed. She's still someone people love to tease, equally quick with appreciative laughter or dry retorts. Williams is legally blind with macular degeneration, but her thoughts are crystal clear.

She is moving across the West Seattle Bridge to "The Mount" — Providence Mount St. Vincent's, which is considered a national model for long-term care, giving residents choices that help them direct their lives and make them feel more at home.

Still, she has lots of worries.

"I have so much to learn. Oh, my."

Fighting loneliness

Williams, who gave up her house after her husband died, now is leaving a house she's shared for the past 17 months with a nurse. She is lonesome and wants company. Russ Larder is gone all day and some weekends, too. But when he's home, he's fun. He honors the sharpness of her mind by never doubting that she'll get his teasing.

She has some fear of encountering "stone faces" where she's moving, but she knows her new home has promise, too.

There are classes five days a week at the Mount — word games, exercise, field trips to the Museum of Flight and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Though the staff is encouraged to take time for a resident's story or to accept an invitation to tea — even if it means the bed is not made on time — there's no getting around that the average age of the residents is 85. In the connected nursing home, 80 percent have some form of dementia.

Will anyone want to bag up sandwiches and popcorn and go to watch Mariner games with Williams, the way Larder does?

"I'm thinking she will bloom and blossom and really go to town," says Larder. He has clients at the Mount, which underwent a $9 million renovation in the 1990s and a major shift in philosophy to pumping up the will to live. He wants to live there when the time comes in a few decades.

Fine, Williams tells him. "I'll put your name on the list."

Making the move

But now, after waiting on that list herself for four months, the day has come for her. The clock has been ticking loudly since early this morning, when Larder and his friend, David Bruce, cooked Williams "a last meal" of French toast, strawberries and a latté.

Williams stands at the top of the stairs at Larder's house, where she can hear the sound of his pickup truck starting. Her dog of 12 years is already gone, given away to a new home, much to Williams' sorrow. He'd never make it at the Mount, because he's a barker and lifts his leg to leave "messages of other kinds," Williams says.

She leans on her walker, wearing jeans and a short-cropped black leather jacket, which covers a bold "No War!" pin on a delicate lavender sweater.

All her worldly possessions — her Edgar doll, Mike Cameron Mariner jersey, the large-screen TV she watches through foggy eyes — sit beside her in boxes or are already there. She culled the best of her clothes but still has so many, some will have to go in storage. She is fitting her life into an assisted-living studio apartment not much bigger than her bedroom at Larder's.

"This is a big deal," she says, confessing her nervousness to visitors. "It turns my life upside down. I don't have a lot of life left, but I want to live it."

Williams has been preparing for this journey for months by attending the Father Mallahan Center for Healing Adult Day Health Program at the Mount twice a week.

She's made a good friend named Nellie, earned $35 on a casino field trip, and cooked an egg roll. "Mine looked like it had a blanket on it," she said. "All it needed was a hat."

But she always knew she'd go home at the end of the day, and now, sticking close to Larder as she enters the carpeted lobby, she knows she will not.

Her three children won't be here today. Her daughter, Patti Estrada, her "guardian angel" who calls nearly every day from California, underwent serious surgery earlier in the week. Son Larry is working, and son Keith — (both Williams? "Yes, hopefully") — was here last night, dropping off a load of new furniture.

People gathered outside her room asking "Where's Patricia?" her son told her, raising her hope that she will make friends.

Adjusting to her new home

As Williams struggles to find her bearings, she stumbles into a nest of promising activity.

Gwen Schwenzer and George "Bud" Bennell are like a comedy team. Schwenzer volunteered here for 11 years before moving in. "Oh, yeah, so you know it has to be good," she tells Williams.

She and Bennell live just down the hall "but not together," Schwenzer says to a roar of laughter. They are close enough, however, that he could sneak into her room at night.

"But it never happens!" she complains.

Then, in an acknowledgment that this is a new world but not an unforgiving one, Schwenzer tells Williams:

"I'll ask you your name 10 times."

"And I'll ask you," Williams says.

Now it's time to find her room. Larder says the name on her door should be that of famed swimmer Esther Williams.

Her TV can go here, above a funky kitchen in a cabinet that she doesn't plan to use. Unable to see well, she's signed up to eat in The Mount's cafe or dining room.

"I know she's going to want to watch TV tonight," Larder says as he and Bruce make note that they need a longer cable.

Here is the shower. It's big enough for several friends, Larder says, calling her inside.

"There's no tub!" Williams says.

Her bed is new and so is a small dresser. She sits in a blue recliner, still bearing the tags from The Bon Marché, where her daughter-in-law Jinx Williams works.

There is a small parade of people coming through, including a nurse who talks to her about whether she'll want to keep having her pills delivered or use the pharmacy downstairs. More hope! The nurse admires Williams' anti-war button and her ability to put up with Larder's jokes.

But then the parade slows. The very thing Williams was trying to avoid by moving here — loneliness — is back upon her.

After a tuna fish sandwich and coffee ("just black, no gin") in the dining room, she comes back to find Larder and Bruce gone to make a second run for her belongings.

She's been courageous all day, but now life seems as bare as her new walls. She'll settle in as the weeks go on, she knows it. But that doesn't help this moment.

"Oh, I hate to see you go," she says as the last of her visitors say goodbye. "I don't know anyone."

Sherry Stripling: sstripling@seattletimes.com