Sometime towards Mom’s 98th year, we, her children, began to consider, and present to her as a possibility, the idea that perhaps she ought to live in an assisted living establishment of some sort. She had owned up to some difficulties with traversing the stairs to and from the basement, where the laundry facilities of her home were located. In addition, there were no blood kin anywhere near her.
She was unimpressed. First off, she was unenthusiastic about moving from the home she had shared with our father, her husband, for a dozen years, and where she had lived during the following thirty years.
Secondly, she had grown accustomed to her home, and did not want to leave her home, in any event.
Third, her solution to “all your children live a thousand miles away, if not on the other side of the planet”, was that one, or all, of us should simply relocate to The Un-Named Maternal State, forsaking our present homes.
Not happening. Brother The Second had his own business, and that sort of thing is not readily amenable to simply relocating halfway across the country. I was not gonna live under the way liberal regime of said state, anyhow, and that was not even considering the fact that all my children resided in The Un-Named Fly Over State. Grandkids, as well.
Finally, Mom presented her (in her view) closing argument: “I simply do not want to live with a bunch of old folks!”
(silent rejoinder: “Mom! You are ninety-freaking-years-old! Rilly?”)
Musings of A Stretcher Ape 
When you get right down to it… it’s her life.
Chip in and get her one of those seat-stair-elevator thingees for the basement/laundry stair problem.
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You’re correct, it IS her life.
she died Jan 2021, so presently it’s a reminiscence. Nevertheless, it provides illumination for my own rapidly aging self.
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I’m sorry for your loss…
I don’t generally go up or down stairs without holding the hand rail any more, things change as I get older.
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Mom passed at age 98. We insisted that she start using a cane when began having falls at age 90. She resisted because “It makes me look old.”
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I was having a conversation one day with my mother, who at the time was in her late 80’s. She was lamenting the fact that she had no friends. I replied with: You don’t have any friends because you outlived hem all. She looked pensive for a minute or two. I think she was mentally checking off a list of friends that had passed. The expression on her face was the one you see when someone realizes the truth of a statement that hadn’t occurred to them.
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I resemble, that remark!
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