A Harpswell woman converts a former bed and breakfast into a warm and welcoming care facility.

By L. Mercedes Wesel, Staff Writer
Orignally Pubilshed Portland Press Herald, Tuesday, July 28, 1998

HARPSWELL – Johanna Wigg, a 27-year-old doctoral student, speaks wistfully of the three years she spent caring for her grandmother, whose mind and talents, but not her spirit, were faded by Alzheimer’s disease.

She died in her sleep in Wigg’s home in 1995.

“Until the end, she thanked me and told me that she loved me when I tucked her into bed,” Wigg said.  “There are pieces of a person’s soul that can’t be stripped.”

Wigg now focuses her passion and her intellect on the care of others at Vicarage by the Sea, a former bed and breakfast she inherited from her mother and converted this year into a home for the elderly.

The families of her two clients say the unique setting and style of care offer the only comfortably compassionate alternative to caring for their loved ones themselves.

For Paul Thibodeau, 75, that meant rising at 3 a.m., when his wife Irene thought the day began.  He washed her, cleaned her bed and caught a few snippets of conversation in French when she was lucid enough to speak.

Irene Thibodeau has suffered a series of small strokes that over the years robbed her of her short-term memory, her ability to speak, and eventually, her mobility.

“Love does strange things.  I didn’t think it was that bad, taking care of her,” Thibodeau said.  “If I had to send her to a nursing home, she’s still be there.  They’re too hospital-like.”

Vicarage by the Sea on Curtis Cove, with an acre of gardens and an ocean view, is onle ofonly five adult family care homes licensed by the state.  Five more license are pending.

It is the only one where residents co-exist with two children, six dogs and a cat, and where they are encouraged to add their own pets to the menagerie.

Jane Colby said that attitude was key in her decision to place her mother at Vicarage by the Sea.

“She’s had pets all her life,” Colby said.  “She’d die of loneliness without them.”

Colby’s mother plans to move into Vicarage by the Sea in September with her corgi and her Maine coon cat.

Visitors might find it hard to tell the difference between this assisted living home and their own grandmother’s seaside cottage.  That’s exactly what Wigg wanted.

“This is the most normalized experience a person can have,” said Wigg, who calls more traditional facilities for the elderly “dehumanizing and isolating.”

On a recent balmy day, 78-year-old Irene Thibodeau sat in her wheelchair on a porch overlooking the gardens.  Lydia, Wigg’s 16 year old greyhound, rested her narrow head on Thibodeau’s lap.  Kelly Golek, the caregiver’s 7 year-old daughter, bounded in and out, kissing Irene goodbye whenever she left.

“My mother loves animals and children,” said Lola Charron of Topsham, Thibodeau’s daughter. “This is a far better place than a nursing home.”

For Wigg, the home is a tribute to her mother and grandmother.

Wigg moved to Maine from Wisconsin with her mother and stepfather in 1984, when she was 14.  Her parents set up a bed and breakfast and tea house called the Vicarage East, just inland from Vicarage by the Sea.

She attended a private girls’ school in Massachusetts, spent one year a College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor and graduated from Mt. Holyoke College in Hadley, Mass.

In 1989, Wigg’s parents built Vicarage by the Sea.  Her stepfather died the following year.

In the early 1990s, after Wigg had begun work on a doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University, her grandfather died and her mother brought her grandmother east from Wisconsin. Wigg cared for her for the last three years of their life.

That experience inspired her to pursue a doctorate, exploring how families and society as a whole deal with dementia.

“I was fascinated by the disease and the social psychology of dementia,” she said.

Last fall, Wigg’s mother died after a short illness.  Wigg was left with a beautiful property and a new mission: To put her philosophy – “tender loving care and a keen eye for changes versus a stethoscope and a needle” – into practice at Vicarage by the Sea.

Wigg sees a strong parallel between society’s current response to dementia and it’s historical reaction to mental illness and mental retardation.

“We tend to institutionlize the people we’re aftraid of, the people we’re unsure of,” she said.  “We’re doing a terrible job (with dementia) right now.  Let’s not do this again.  I wanted to find an alternative.”

She and her clients believe Vicarage is the answer.

The rambling cottage has whitewashed and knotty-pine walls, soft beige carpeting and comfortable homey furniture.  It is decorated with family photographs and sculpture done by Wigg’s grandmother.  The sculptures range from flowering to abstract to childlike and literal, chronicling the progression of her grandmother’s illness.

Care costs $2,000 to $2,500 a month and is covered by Medicare.

Cheryl Golek, a longtime friend of Wigg’s, lives there in a basement apartment with her two children, Kelly and 8-year-old Michael.  Golek serves as the primary caregiver and cook.

For Paul Thibodeau, the home was immediately impressive, but after 57 years of marriage, it broke his heart to put his wife there.  When it came time for Irene to go, he couldn’t take her.

“I went out the door, but the kids had to take her.  I stayed home,” he said.  “I went to see her the next day.  I’ve visited her every day but one.”

On her first day there, Wigg and Golek took Irene Thibodeau to a flea market in Brunswick.  Since then, she has gone to the hairdresser and to visit Golek’s son at camp.  To them, she’s one of the family.