It’s a downcast day. The sky is a dismal grey, the breeze on the blustery side. Occasionally, a fine mist falls from the heavens as if the angels are overcome in their grief. It’s a bit how I feel as I sit in the nursing home lobby watching the sea of elderly residents’ parade by in their wheelchairs and walkers congesting the hallways. I sit and try to busy myself while my husband visits his cantankerous mother.

I watch as patients roll by with tubes catching their urine and tubes giving them breath. The faces forlorn search each newcomer or visitor as if pleading for release. The caregivers no longer hear the cries for bathroom assistance or for a push down the hall. The sadness is all-encompassing and it’s all I can do to keep my emotions stilled.

As I sit in the contrived cheerfulness of the lobby that belies the true ambiance of hospital beds, bedpans, and doors without locks. I contemplate life under someone else’s rules - rules intended to ease the burden of the nurse’s aides. Rules like restricted days for shower privilege and lights out. I think how culinary delights are replaced by food lacking all semblance of its natural state. I’m overtaken with the realization that one day in the not too distant future, I too, could find myself dependant on strangers for my care. Unlike my mother-in-law, my husband and I are childless. There will be no beholden or guiltridden offspring to look out for us or protect us in our golden years.

For a brief moment I wonder if it’s not too late to adopt. But I quickly shake off that notion perhaps because there are not enough years to rack up the guilt.

So, here I sit contemplating the inevitable. Surely, one day I too will be in diapers unable to depend on my bladder and betrayed by my sphincter muscle. My eyes, which were never excellent, will fail me. My hearing, thanks to youthful exuberance, will leave me missing the nuances of a delightful conversation and no doubt, my bones will have shrunk my five-foot frame to childlike proportions. Fear will overtake me and my more courageous self will be but a far off memory. As to my memory, no doubt, it too will deceive me and I will find myself repeating the stories of my youth ad-nauseum.

So, as I sit her watching the sea of lifeless faces trapped in failing bodies, I feel the fear and sadness welling up within me. I wonder out loud, “Is this all there is?”

It is precisely for these reasons that I began an exploration of available choices for those of us who wish not to be dependant on others when our time comes to say adieu.