Any advice or tips for moving someone into a memory care home?

As moving in day approaches, your MIL is becoming very scared. Your profile and post doesn’t mention,, but I’m assuming she has dementia? At this point, explaining and explaining to her over and over about what’s going to happen won’t help. She’s gone into flight or fight mode. Tell her you will stay for “a while” tomorrow. Have lunch with her. Have dinner. Stay calm and matter of fact. If she refuses to even get out of bed and leave the house, I wonder if asking her if she wants to go “shopping” or “out to lunch” would work. Don’t know if that would work or not. You might also want to call the facility and ask how to handle it. Good luck. Come back and let us know how it went.

One thing I learned before moving my Dad into memory care, is to try to set up the bedroom similar to how it was at home. That way should your Mom awake during the night, seeing the furniture in the same arrangement would make her feel like she is in the same bedroom.

Also, do not buy new bedspread, even if it is several decades old. The same bedspread will be a comfort for her.

As for getting your Mom to the memory care facility, Ahmijoy has the right idea about calling the facility to get ideas on how to make this work.

Update: Placement went pretty well. When leaving here with my husband there were some tears. Her other son met them at the home. I went over later with a few more of her things. I left during arts and crafts. Hubs and his brother stayed longer. I guess her other DIL showed up later. All in all she seems calm for now. We will all go back again tomorrow and probably continue such until one or more of us has a conflict. Fingers crossed for now. Thank you.