Jack had been a classic-car buff who loved to tinker with old engines and bring them back to glory, even reupholstering the seats and applying a new paint job. Now, he could barely feed himself.
“It felt like he had changed almost overnight,” Deborah said. “It was hard to watch somebody who could do anything, now not do anything.”
Jack spent about a year in a private nursing home while on the waiting list to get into Vineland.
When he was admitted more than three years ago, Jack was placed in the dementia unit, which was under lockdown to prevent residents from wandering away. Marilyn would visit almost every day.
As COVID-19 began to spread across New Jersey in 2020, all units of the three veterans homes went on lockdown in the second week of March. This worried Marilyn and Deborah, because Jack would no longer have an advocate able to see how things were going inside the home. They had already complained to management about Jack’s being put into a room and isolated when he was misbehaving, after other residents’ visitors told them about the incident.
Unlike the chaos that ensued at the Paramus and Menlo Park homes, Vineland was largely spared the worst of the pandemic during its first months. COVID spread less rapidly in South Jersey, where the population density is a fraction of that in the northern and central parts of the state.
Still, communication with the Vineland staff was spotty. “You had to be proactive,” Deborah said. “We would only get updates if we called in.”
