Caregivers by Proxy, That's the Plan

My mom is 87 years old.  Yow!  That scares me not just because it sounds so old... it does, though... but also because it sounds like it's not so old that it couldn't happen to me.  In fact, I'm so old that there are times when 87 doesn't sound quite as old as it should.  But even the chills I get contemplating my personal fate and how imminent it probably is are nothing compared to the roiling in my guts that ensues when I think about what's in store for me as Mom blossoms into "old old age."  See, we live so long now that they have to divide old age up into segments.  There's old age, old old age, and "super-centenarians" that I'm aware of.  And even in an age in which when somebody keels over at 70 or 72 people bemoan the fact that he died "so young," the consensus is that 87 is solidly in the "old old age" category.
 
Anyway, apparently when you enter "old old age" it's time to think about things like "independent living," "assisted living," or "the booby hatch," depending on how much you want to scale back your activities.  Many senior seniors lead active lives, as witnessed by the wide, well-lit "Continence" section in most major supermarkets and the fact that they're still showing those James Whitmore commercials on late-night TV.  Plus, the elderly population is growing by leaps and bounds, and even The Fonz is advertising reverse-mortgages during the "news hour."  Oh yeah, and the continued existence of the "news hour" on all three major "networks" (I don't count Fox) and in fact the continued existence of the "networks" themselves, is directly attributable to the avid interest of the "Long Goodbye" set.
 
But not all people feel like running for president when they're 80, much less when they're 87, and my Mom has decided that it's time to "scale back."  In her case this means having somebody else worry about it when a light bulb burns out or the lawn needs to be mowed.  In fact, forget about the lawn entirely.  Let somebody else find a reliable cleaning lady and handyman and somebody to buy the groceries, let your kids swing by to drive you to church.  She worked like a mule to raise a passle of kids and tend to her husband's needs, managed on her own for 15 years after those missions were fully accomplished, and now feels like... like what?
 
Well, "weary" is a word that might fit, although you can never tell for sure with Mom.  (What's the song say?  "She may be weary..."  But maybe not.)  Or maybe she wants to live closer to some of her kids.  Well, maybe.  Or maybe she just figures that "it's time."
 
Dangerous phrase, "it's time."  I got married once because somebody decided that "it [was] time."  Remember that old Carly Simon song?  "You say it's time we moved in together/ and raised a family of our own, you and me/ Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be..." A recipe for disaster if I've ever heard one.
 
Of course, according to The Byrds and The Bible, there is a time for everything, and if there's a time to move to a "senior living facility" I guess that Mom would be the one to know it.  And it looks like she's going to be having an awful lot of help making all her decisions, as at least some of my many siblings have plunged into the project with a will.  I guess I can understand the motivation for that.  Once the old lady is safely installed somewhere, we can all stop worrying about the Sword of Damocles that's been hanging over our heads in the form of all the crazy scenarios that might unfold if Mom suddenly became incapacitated while running around loose.  This way, you just pay a monthly maintenance fee and everything's taken care of... sort of like having a property manager or something, I guess.

But here I sit, looking at a picture of Mom in her thirties, still young and strong even though there were bags under her eyes from chasing around the four-- count 'em, four-- kids she already had at that point, and then I look at another picture of her and Dad standing in the pretty little backyard that she designed and landscaped (they were my age, then), and another one of the two of them after his first heart attack and she's in her early sixties I think and they're in the pretty living room that she furnished and decorated... and I hope that she'll be cool ceding so much control over her day-to-day environment and that she'll look before she leaps.

As for me... well, 87 isn't that far away in geologic or historical terms, but it's pretty far away and as for Mom I guess maybe she's right that "it will all work out somehow."  Well, that's for sure, I guess.  Wisdom of the ages, that.  Or should that be "wisdom of the aged?"