"My name is Phyllis and this is Toby and we both live at The Bristal in Englewood. I grew up in Brooklyn, I met my husband in Brooklyn. We moved to Englewood Cliffs when our second child was born. There used to be a diner here, it was a really good diner, and the diner was gone. But instead of the diner there was a sign that said Bristal Assisted Living and a phone number.
Now at that time, my husband was very sick and we knew where it was going to go. I lived in Englewood Cliffs which is very close to here. My life was there, my friends were there, I knew the area and even though I didn't really know what assisted living was, I wrote down the phone number and I called.
I needed to be as close to where my life was as possible. I needed most of all, to be able to have a place where I could bring Toby.
We're just encouraged to do anything, it's hard to say at nine I do this, at ten I do this, but I'm always with people; And when there's no activity scheduled and mostly there is you could just hang out. There's breakfast, lovely pancakes with bacon, I love that. There's an exercise class at ten, there's some kind of lecture or something it's always something different after that, and then there's lunch and there's movies there's just a lot.
We have a bus, we have a driver, they take us we went to the JCC the other night, we've gone to the MOMA, we went to MOMA a couple of weeks ago. I never would have dreamed that in a year I could have new friends, I could have, in addition to my old friends, I could have a new life and I could be happy. Never even of anything I thought about and that's all come true for me.
The first time I came here, I knew this was the place for me."
