We were driving out to Tyson’s for a movie, the warm air rushing into the car, without the need for AC. I’d brought up the desires of those nearby who wanted children, the clock ever ticking away, counting down the window of potential. I made some grand statement of when was best, but of course it is individual. Some will manage their own retirement and their child’s graduation from high school without worrying about the growing draw on their funds, possibly imperiling their own life change. Some will not, and will grow despondent and bitter, and others will muddle through. When does enough life experience to inform the choices you make for the next stage in life become too much?
He raised the thought of whether I had thought about who would care for me in my old age. I had not, and had to ponder. My flip answer was once my stock answer for burial, since it was simple, comforting, relatively cheap, and implied a certain symmetry of thousands of lives lived just like mine: return to Sweden. With aplomb L pointed out that would be terribly lonely and of course it would be, and in ways even he did not conceive. Swedes are impenetrable to the wiles of charm and efforts to make friends, or almost perfectly so. Making new friends as an adult would probably take more years than I have left at this point, at least of the value and openness I have now, if it even were possible.
So I have not, and my next quip was that the best of not having children in old age was to be afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and so only torture myself and not those I loved around me as my decay and frustration and anger lashed out without reason at those around me. I suppose the best to do is to remain as independent as possible, for as long as possible, and then try with every means of legal writ to ensure safe harbor, at least for a time. L raised the gay or gay populated nursing home idea and of course wisely noted things could go just as wrong there, as I pondered the self-selecting nature of small communities, not to mention care and quality thereof. Yet that too should continue a life as lived, or better.
And then what?
