At 70, Nicole is an active retiree, who is enjoying a well-deserved rest to give her time to associations and to develop her passion for creative hobbies. If the septuagenarian has been enjoying retirement to the fullest since the age of 63, the shadow of a family tragedy pushed her to show foresight and ingenuity by financing the end of her life herself.
This drama began twenty years ago, in 2004, when Nicole’s father tragically died from lung cancer. Jeanne, his mother, finds herself widowed and alone in her house in Finistère. “I lived near Toulouse, and came back to Brittany to take care of my mother. I turned the lives of my husband and my children upside down to be with her, nothing seemed normal to me anymore,” confides Nicole. Jeanne quickly showed signs of dementia and could no longer live alone. “I was afraid that she would not be able to get up after a fall, she had a lot of difficulty washing herself,” says the septuagenarian. So, Nicole quits her job and decides to move in with her mother.
Every day, Nicole traveled back and forth between her mother’s home and the one she had left, where her husband and children still lived. “This pace of life got the better of my marriage, and I regret not having been very present for my three children. Now that they have grown up and started their own families, things are much better between us,” she says. For Nicole, “abandoning” her mother at the nursing home was out of the question. “I knew she would be safe, in the hands of professionals, but after my father died, I couldn’t find the strength to leave her alone,” Nicole continues. After two years, the retiree finally decided to find a specialized establishment for her mother, and returned to work. “I went to see her twice a week,” explains the mother. Six months later, Jeanne died in circumstances that Nicole preferred to keep to herself.
“Frankly, yes, it was traumatic. I put aside my personal, family and love life for several years. I would do it again without hesitation, but it’s painful to know that I wasn’t there with her when she died,” says Nicole. After these trying years, the former teacher made a promise to herself: she will not leave the end of her life in the hands of her children. From the age of 60, the mother and grandmother gathered her savings and redoubled her efforts to have a sufficiently large nest egg to finance her end of life in a nursing home.
“Unfortunately, my health forced me to retire earlier than I would have liked,” regrets Nicole. Despite this, Nicole has saved, throughout her life, more than 40,000 euros which she reserves to finance her end of life. She visited several specialized residences in Occitanie, where she returned to live. “I took the time to make my choice. I visited each establishment three times, to be sure, and I finally opted for a nursing home that suits me well. It’s not too far from my three children, if they want to come see me,” says the retiree. “When my health or my mind starts to go off the rails, I don’t want my children to leave everything for me. Of course, they better come see me from time to time!”, she concludes jokingly.