"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."
