Facing the ninetieth decade of one's life makes you sit back and think how short the future is. I am one of the fortunate ones who still have control of their lives but it was brought home to me when I talked to my 67 year old daughter yesterday and she told me that she was going to a seminar on ageing.
Linda has been a rock since we lost Bobby and I don't know what I would have done without her care and support. In the midst of that, she was visiting her father and feeding him every day at the nursing home on her lunch hour. He had severe dementia and insisted that he had never had children. He had three.
Dementia of any kind is the dreaded bugaboo of my generation. I lost two of my closest friends to it. Oddly enough, they were both brilliant women which made it seem worse. There seems to be a link to heredity and to social isolation but neither of them had that in their history.
My cousin, two years younger than myself, is in terrible shape. She forgot how to tell time and the days of the week. Her son needs to put her in assisted living but is dragging his feet. She is still driving and getting lost in the small town where she lives. My sister found a device that tells her the time and date and we bought it for her. She has had a number of strokes.
Assisted living is undeniably expensive but sometimes ageing in place is not an option.