No, my mom is in the US, and a bit of a crusty Yankee to boot.
As far as elderly housekeeping here.. I don't have a huge experience but can say that the majority of oldsters tend to get taken into the homes of a family member at some point. My Italian MIL is still 90% independent in her own apt. which is in the same building as Italian SIL. She is the only one I know of, of her age (over eighty), that is still living alone; the other half-dozen or so of my acquaintance are w/family. SIL has already taken in her own 90-ish MIL who is about 1/4-1/2 gone into senile dementia. There's quite a big market, though, for foreign (often illegal) 'badanti' (caretakers) for oldsters.
The near end of the line is, as in the US, the "casa di riposo".. the rest home / old age home. The one such structure I saw briefly was 1960s dormitory in appearance. I'm not sure if that was a private or public structure but I tend to think public. There may be some private facilities that might be more upscale American-style "assisted living", but few as yet. The "over-55" "active adult" segregation with golf carts and such is inexistent. The assumption seems to be that if you only need occasional, mostly non-medical, assistance you will rely on family members or engage an untrained home aide for daily living.
Home repair is less of an issue overall since the majority live in apartments, in which case there are virtually no yards, nor direct responsibilities for care of the exteriors or, usually, of the heating system. The worst issue might be plumbing/electrical problems or the odd appliance failure.
We have already had the occasion to do a remote 'intervention' when, while living in the US, we came to hear that Italian MIL had left a gas burner on and then gone to sleep. Only the quick action of a neighbor who came home late and smelled the gas saved her life by calling the FD (do not telephone the person or ring the doorbell!). Usually MIL is good about turning off the whole gas line after cooking, but for whatever reason didn't that one night. So, alarmed, we went online and found a gas stove with auto shut-off when it detects there isn't a flame, and had it sent to her house straightaway. She curses it, since it is not easy to light, whether by defect or design I'm unsure.
Another intervention after we came to Italy was to re-do the entire kitchen (IKEA, with a friend, over a weekend) while she was in the hospital getting her knee replaced. That was more of a gift and something to make working in the kitchen easier rather than an absolute necessity. We mounted all the upper cabinets much lower so she could reach them w/her arthritis, and nearly doubled the counter space in her tiny galley kitchen. The deep pull-out drawers for pots and pans were also a big improvement over the old-style plain-box lower cabinets where you had to bend down and reach in. It was a surprise and she would never have stood for it had she not been out-of-commission and unaware of our plan!.
We live a couple of hours away from MIL now. She visits for a few weeks a year, sometimes because she wants to and sometimes because other family members will not be nearby (like in August). We told her (me through a bit of clenched teeth, mentally) that she could come live with us instead of staying in Rome, but she seems to want to stay put with her familiar spaces and routine, no differently than many US forum members have recounted about their own older relatives.
With my mom in the US.. my big pet peeve is that there's only one full bath, upstairs, and while the tile is not falling off it still allows water to run down inside the wall and **fill up the downstairs hall light fixture with water**. She won't get it fixed and assures us that angling the showerhead correctly is all that is necessary. I worry that whatever is supporting the tub will eventually have rotted and that whoever is taking a shower may find themselves on their naked a**, with possibly a broken neck, in the front hall. The whole surround really needs to be re-done at minimum, but if it were my house I would have the whole bathroom stripped out to the studs anyway to assess any possible damage and renovated in its entirety. I can't imagine that being less than a 1-2 month project and there's no way it's gonna happen without me being there to initiate, make calls, prod, and oversee. My sister, 2 hours away with two little kids, can't really help.
Mom will say it's "not worth it" since she won't be long for this world. However, she's been saying that for 15-20 years.
For our own selves, we really need to think about it. We don't have kids to [-]wipe our butts[/-] stand by our side in our golden years. DH loves the American assisted-living scheme but who knows whether our finances will permit that in 20+ years. I would hesitate buying a LTC policy not even knowing if the States will be where we spend our "real" retirement... the retirement from independence.
sorry for the big OT post, but Ron asked.
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Bestwifeever, I think the "we all had it coming" is that "we" all believed that a fantasy gift could, in itself, change people's fortunes.