"He's really something," says Edith DeBoer about her husband Rich. The comment rings with significant clarity from a woman who has some memory issues, memory issues that have made it impossible for her to live on her own anymore. Rich and Edith DeBoer now live at Royal Park Place, a Providence retirement community in Zeeland, Michigan.
Rich appreciates the services available, the contracted care available for his wife, the food, the staff, and the Christian environment. But part of him also misses the house he gave up to be here, and the independence he used to know. Although there are no specific limits on his freedoms, no regulations that particularly cramp his style, he does suffer a certain sense of loss.
But Rich DeBoer is not one to complain. Rather, he is grateful for "places like these." Places with staff who can easily be hired to keep Edith's medications on schedule. Places with a full calendar of social opportunities to choose from. Places where the walks are shoveled by someone else, and children are a local phone call away.
"Family is everything," says Rich with a clearing of the throat that gives away the depth of emotion underlying the simple statement. "I couldn't have done this" — he waves his arm, indicating...everything — "without my family." It was his sons and their wives who found Royal Park Place, who chose the apartment, who measured for furniture and arranged for the moving van. "By the time we got here," smiles Rich, "it pretty much already felt like home."
"I love it here," pipes up Edith matter-of-factly. And in the end, that's all that matters to Rich. He would do anything for his wife of 63 years, the girl he patiently courted in high school, the sweetheart who wrote him letters through three years of service on the European front. "In sickness and in health," he affirms. "'til death do us part."
He is really something.
