Yvette Nicole Brown shares what she’s learned about caregiving and assisted living

When Emmy-nominated actress Yvette Nicole Brown married her husband Anthony “Tony” Davis in December 2024, 200 of their friends and family members attended the romantic Beverly Hills ceremony, including many of her former castmates from the TV comedy “Community.” But the most special guest of all was a surprise even to the bride.

As the couple prepared to say their vows, Davis asked her, “Do you trust me?” She said she did, and he replied, “Okay. I'll be right back,” and walked away. “My friends thought I had been left at the altar,” Brown recalls. But Davis quickly returned—pushing her father, Omar, in a wheelchair. At the altar, Brown burst into overwhelmed, joyful tears.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease more than a decade ago, Omar lives in a memory care facility near his daughter in Los Angeles, but his condition had declined to the point that it hadn't seemed possible for him to attend the wedding. “When we were making plans, I was thinking of how hard it would be to get him there, and would he understand where he was, and what if he needed to go to the bathroom or something,” Brown says. “And so I told myself that it just couldn't happen and I would have to accept that. But my husband realized that it would not be the same if he wasn't there.”

Privately, Davis spoke with his future father-in-law's caregivers, staff at the wedding venue, and medical professionals, arranging everything to ensure Omar could attend safely and with dignity. “When he pushed my dad up the aisle, there was not a dry eye in the room. Tony was crying. All my friends were crying. I was ugly crying, and I kept thinking, ‘Lord, don't let me cry these lashes off.’ I was trying to keep it as pretty as I could, but I was a mess,” Brown says, tearing up at the memory. “And Tony said to me, ‘We could not do this without him here.’ I will never forget the gift of that, because it's something that I never dreamed was possible.”

Brown's father, who served as head engineer at Maple Heights Middle School in her hometown of Cleveland, OH, for many years, started showing signs of dementia in 2013. She soon realized that he wasn't in a position to keep living on his own. “He was retiring from his job, and I had flown back to help him with the paperwork and get everything settled for his retirement. I had put together a binder with everything he needed—all of his financial documents, his Social Security card, his insurance, and so on,” she recalls. “But on my way back to California, by the time I got to the airport, he called to tell me he had misplaced the binder with everything in it. Anybody who found it and picked it up could have stolen his identity. He eventually found it, but that's when I first began to realize he would need to move in with me.”

At the time, she was still playing single mother Shirley Bennett in “Community,” which had an intense filming schedule. When NBC announced the show's cancellation in May 2014, Brown took it as the perfect opportunity to make the move. “They announced the show was canceled on a Friday, and by Sunday, I was in Ohio packing my daddy up to move in with me,” she says.

It marked the first time she had really lived in a home with her father, as her parents had divorced when she was about a year old and she always lived with her mom. “I'd make him bacon and eggs in the morning, I'd sit next to him and build Legos, and we'd listen to music or watch movies like ‘The Five Heartbeats,’” Brown says. “That movie could always bring him back—I swear I need to send them residual checks.”

When Yahoo! picked up “Community” for a sixth season a couple of months after her father's move, Brown met with the show's producers. “I asked them to release me, because the hours were just not conducive to me caring for my dad, and they did,” she says. “Three or four months after that, I was blessed to be cast on a reboot of the old ‘Odd Couple’ sitcom, and the hours on that show were more like 20 hours a week instead of 80 hours a week, so I didn't have to leave the industry completely. I was able to have an income, keep the lights on at the house, and still go home at lunch and check on my dad.”

At that point in his illness, Omar could still be alone for periods during the day, eat meals on his own, take the trash out, and handle other tasks. “He was still there,” Brown says. “As his condition progressed, I got caregivers who could come to the house, and we just worked it out. And then COVID happened, and we had like a year and a half where we weren't leaving the house anyway, so I was home with him.”

Changing circumstances

Brown cared for her father at home until he fell and broke his hip in mid-2024. “Even after he recovered, the dementia told him that he couldn't walk, so he became bedridden,” she says. “He started needing 24-hour, round-the-clock care, and I said, ‘Okay, I'm going to take a class to become certified as a caregiver, and I'm going to learn how to do all of that: to flip him in the bed and change his diaper and everything.’”

Then a social worker asked her some tough questions. “He said, ‘How do you think your time with your father would be best spent at this stage of his illness? Would he rather have you as his nurse or his daughter? And do you think there could be someone out there who could care for your father better than you—not love him better than you, but care for him better than you?’ And I knew he was right,” she says. “There were people out there who could care for my dad much better than I could, and I could concentrate on being his daughter.”

Brown threw her energy into finding the right care home for her father—a journey that was sometimes painful and enraging. “I remember walking into one place, and I will never forget this horrible woman in charge,” she says. “We walked in, and to the left was a patient, a woman who looked like she was in her late 20s or 30s. She was nonverbal, unable to care for herself, and had just been dumped on a sofa. This awful woman said to me, ‘I'm sorry that you have to see her. Don't worry about her.’ She's sorry that I have to see her? Oh my God. I weep for that woman and for her family members who are unaware. The idea that someone who is supposed to care for you will push you away and decide that you don't matter, that's outrageous.”

Ultimately, Brown found a small “board and care home”—a residential facility that cares for a small number of people in a home-like setting—about 15 minutes from her house. “There are only about four other residents there. They all have dinner and breakfast together. It's a beautiful place,” she says. “The first time I walked in, I smelled lasagna and cake. A sweet woman named Lala is his main caregiver, and every time I go over there, she's like, ‘Do you want coffee?’ It's helped me let go of the guilt. They're not me, but they really do love my dad. And now I can just be his daughter.”

As Brown learned, knowing when it is time to move from the home to an assisted living situation can be one of the hardest decisions a caregiver can make when a loved one has dementia.

“Caregiving for someone with dementia is one of the toughest jobs in the world to have,” says behavioral neurologist Michael Rosenbloom, MD, FAAN, director of clinical trials for the Memory and Brain Wellness Center at the University of Washington in Seattle. In the early stages of the disease, when patients can still reasonably bathe, dress, and use the bathroom themselves, they don't need much support, he adds, so that doesn't take as much of a toll on the caregiver. “But once someone gets to the moderate stages of dementia, they need more and more assistance with self-care.”

Patients may start experiencing symptoms such as aggression, agitation, hallucinations and delusions, disrupted sleep cycles, and wandering, which becomes a safety issue, Dr. Rosenbloom says. “I can't tell you how many times I've heard from families about police finding a loved one who was wandering down a street or even a highway outside their neighborhood,” he adds. “All these factors can put an enormous strain on the physical and mental health of the care partner.”

Elizabeth Edgerly, senior director of community programs and services for the Alzheimer's Association, says caregivers should know that they are doing the best they can under the circumstances. “No one can tell you what you should do,” she says. “There is no magic wand that can tell each family what the best solution is.”

The Alzheimer's Association offers an online guide for care partners and a free helpline staffed 24/7 by master's-level clinicians who can provide more advice. The Caregiver Action Network, a family caregiving organization, offers a similar support line, and the organization CaringKind has resources as well. Local aging offices may have other resources, including respite grants to provide home-based care for a few hours per week.

Be proactive

So how can caregivers find the best facility for their loved ones like Brown did? Ideally, they should plan ahead so they do not need to make that decision during an emergency situation, says Gregg Day, MD, associate professor and director of the division of behavioral neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. “If there's a critical safety issue, or the caregiver themselves has become sick or injured and simply can't provide care, then everything is done in a rush and you don't have time to be deliberate and thoughtful.”

Planning ahead also gives you the opportunity to involve your loved one in the discussion as much as they are able. “Ask them what they would like to see happen if they are not able to live on their own anymore,” Edgerly says. “Sometimes an older adult will say, ‘Well, I always liked that particular home down the street where some of my friends already live. I think I'd like to go there.’ And think about the long term. What happens if things change down the road with your loved one's condition and they need additional care? Some assisted living facilities have memory care right next door, so you don't have to make another big move.”

Dr. Day recommends finding trusted sources to make referrals and visiting the places you're considering at different times of day. Some facilities offer respite care as well as residential care, so you can bring in your loved one for short periods of time and experience the setting.

Dr. Rosenbloom notes other important factors to consider include the staff-to-patient ratio. “I've seen really beautiful places that just don't have enough staff to adequately care for the number of patients they have,” he says. Opportunities for residents to participate in physical, mental, and social activities, such as exercise classes, games, and other events, are also important so “the person is not sitting around in their room without any type of stimulation,” he says.

Caregivers and patients should consider the effort the facility puts into getting to know the patient as a person, too. “I've seen facilities that have a book on each resident, not just their medical history, but who they are, what they did for a living, their family,” Dr. Rosenbloom says. “That helps the staff have greater insight into what is important to that individual and how to care for them.”

Brown says her guiding principle for choosing a care facility was, “Make sure it's someplace that you would want to be yourself.” She also suggests making unannounced visits at random times of the day to ensure that the facility is as good as you believe it to be.

“If a facility only lets you come at a certain time, that's probably not the right place because they're keeping it picture-pretty for that time, but Lord knows what's happening every other moment,” Brown says. “When I moved my dad into this home, they told me, ‘Any time you could go and see him if he was in his own home, you can come and see him here.’ I pop in all hours of the day and night, and it always smells like apple pie and pasta.”

A voice for caregivers

After more than a decade of caring for her dad, Brown has become something of an expert on caregiving, so much so that in August 2024, she launched the podcast “Squeezed,” a seven-part series about the everyday lives of caregivers from across the country. It's available on Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music.

“Caregiving is such a solitary endeavor for most people,” Brown says. “Most of us are so tired and so depleted by the care for our loved ones that we don't have time for self-care or have time to congregate with other people like us. My hope is that ‘Squeezed’ can be a respite, a friend that can be on in the background while you're in the midst of caring for the people that you love, and give you the opportunity to hear examples of people going through the same thing you're going through. We have people in my position—adult children caring for parents with dementia—and we also have people caring for their children and their parents, and people who are caring for husbands or wives. We hit caregiving from every single direction.”

Brown calls “Squeezed” a “docu-podcast”—instead of interviews in front of a microphone, crews visit caregivers’ homes, recording them at work, while playing with their kids, and during other parts of their daily lives. “You hear their environment, you hear what it's really like,” she says. “You will laugh, you will cry, you will shake your fist at the sky, but it's a good ride every episode.”

And as chair of the Creative Coalition Entertainment Industry Commission on Family Caregiving, Brown speaks out on behalf of the 48 million Americans caring for someone 18 or older, according to a 2020 report by the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP.

“Creative Coalition is a philanthropic arm of the entertainment industry, and we've been working with the AARP on initiatives to make things better for caregivers, like meeting with members of Congress to ask for policy solutions that will save them time and money and give them the resources they need,” Brown says. “We're also trying to get writers and producers and directors to show more stories of caregiving, because you can't be it if you can't see it.”

At this point in his disease, Brown's father doesn't speak much. “There are some days when he may not remember my name, but he knows I'm his light,” she says. “His eyes light up when I walk in the room. But it's literally emptying yourself of what you expect, bit by bit and moment by moment, and it's so hard to see him struggle. There are days when he will say, ‘I don't know what's going on, Yvette,’ or ‘I don't know why.’”

To draw him out, Brown relies on the improvisational skills she's learned as an actor. “Maybe today he thinks we're at a train station. I don't argue with that; I'll use the thing we do in improv called, ‘Yes, and…’” she says. “I'll say, ‘Okay, what time is the train coming, Daddy? Are we gonna get on? What do you want to do while we wait?’ As he creates worlds, I inhabit them with him. That's how we've gotten through it, because I'm just so happy that I still have him. It is the privilege of a lifetime to be the caretaker of my dad's memories. And I will continue to be his champion until the Lord calls him up.”

More on caregiving from Yvette Nicole Brown

Yvette Nicole Brown shares her Alzheimer’s caregiving journey and the inspiration behind her own podcast. Dr. Francesca Falzarano shares what she believes the future of caregiving should look like and how technology can help get it there.