A contributive life beyond 70 years

When my mother was approaching her 70s, she said that she wanted to commit suicide so that she wouldn’t have to face the discomfort of aging. Then she met her college sweetheart and changed her mind. She married him and they spent eight lovely years together as he slowly declined and died from Alzheimers disease. Then she moved closer to me and now, while I'm approaching my 70s, Mom's focus is to be the person who lives longer than her ancestors. At 92, she's closing in on her mother's record of 99. Dealing with an aging parent presents a challenging learning curve as I have never done this before. I did visit both of my grandmothers in nursing homes when I had the time, and I agonized over how to bring my mother's mother home to live with me to get her out of the nursing home. I considered starting a daycare facility for aged and preschool people as a way to earn money while caring for my grandmother. Alas, I was unable to realize my goal. My daughter is now dealing with an aging mother-in-law and asked me what would I look for in a nursing home for myself. My mother's recent ride home in a police car from the grocery store because she couldn't find the car she stopped driving ten years ago resulted in me giving her a gentle lecture about making a plan for her care when she is no longer able to care for herself. She's not ready to make a plan she says, but this event and my daughter's question prompted me to write this post. What is my plan? And what am I looking for in living arrangements in the future when I'm no longer able to care for myself? The first thing that comes to mind is living a contributive life: grandma's bandages, mom's afghans and knitted hats, me watching babies. I come from a long line of people who tried to make a difference in society. My grandmother accrued thousands of volunteer hours visiting disabled veterans at the Buffalo Veteran's Hospital. For as long as I can remember she drove into Buffalo every Tuesday to visit the service people who were hospitalized and helped them write letters or she read to them or just visited. Maybe that was a way for her to stay connected to people her son, James’s age as he died in a plane crash in WWII. In her later years, after my grandfather died, she visited the elderly in a nursing home and continued to volunteer her time to cheer up others. Sometimes we joked that the people she visited were younger than she. When she lived in her own apartment, Grandma continued to stay active, participating in senior citizen's activities, playing cards with friends, and knitting bandages for the lepers. When she began having TIAs, which caused her to behave in irrational ways, both my mother and I tried to convince her to live with one of us. She had taken in her mother in law, and then later, her mother when they became disabled, and through that experience, she didn't want one of us to have that same burden. So she went into a nursing home and declined rapidly without having opportunities to contribute to her society any longer. My mother also made contributions to society, first as a teacher, then when she retired, volunteering with a youth group at her church by making sweaters for the them and traveling with them on their annual trip to Washington, DC. She traveled to South Africa to help raise awareness of apartheid, and volunteered at a reconciliation center in Northern Ireland during the troubles to bring understanding among Catholics and Protestants. She's staunchly independent, having traveled around Europe on her own with a Eurail Pass and staying in hostels or guest houses before Rick Steves gave us guidebooks to make the way easier. Now Mom is declining to the point that she's losing her non-existent car in the parking lot, and not being willing to let me help her. I know that at least in my mind, a nursing home is not an option, even though I have put a $2500 deposit on a bed for her "just in case we need one." I would prefer that she continue to live in her senior citizens apartment with some services perhaps to help her manage her affairs without taking away too much of her independence. You see, she's still living a contributive life knitting hats and crocheting afghans for the residents of the building. The major obstacle is her independent spirit and the deterioration of her mind to the point that she doesn't understand what I mean when I tell her that we need to make a plan. So having that example to follow, I also wish to live a contributive life in my declining years. And I'm really good at watching babies and children.