NEW YORK: Real-estate agent Cindy Bradley has known for years how she’d want to get older, should she end up alone. She saw it on a sit-com about three widows and a divorcee.
“My friends and I had always laughed when the ‘Golden Girls’ were on, and I would always say, ‘Don’t worry — when we’re old, I’ll buy us a quad pod!'” Bradley said.
Then one day last year, Bradley was looking at an empty lot behind her office, and inspiration hit. Later, she sat down and sketched out on a paper napkin plans for what she nicknamed the “Golden Girls House,” where four women could live together but have their own space.
“I had a widowed client who told me how afraid she was of living alone, and how lonely she was,” said Bradley, 60. “I thought, you know, with 10,000 of us a day turning 65, we have to change the conversation about how we house seniors. So I thought, ‘OK, how do I want to live if something happens to my husband? … I like to be alone, but I don’t want to live alone…”