Here I am, an elderly parent. That is to say, I am widowed, live in a house that’s too big for me, am slowing down physically, and have an adult kid who is raising a young child.

I am always reading threads about people who are in despair because their parents are just not being rational. The parents are living in squalor, are chronically ill, are still driving despite being distracted and dangerous, keep falling and breaking things, and are absolutely refusing to accept help. This conventional narrative ends in triumph when the children swoop in and put their parents into some kind of eldercare situation, because it’s the children telling the story. Or else they move their parents in with them, and everyone is martyred.

My grandmother did get to live in her house until she died, though my mother went and stayed in her house for the last month, but my grandmother lived on a property right next to my uncle, and she had money for a maid and a handyman.

My mother wasn’t as lucky; she got Parkinson’s, and though she had inherited my grandmother’s place, she didn’t have the resources my grandmother did. Thus, when my stepfather died, my mom had to move.

She hadn’t put much thought into getting old. Luckily, it turned out she had enough money to move into a life care community if she sold her beautiful house, but she chose a place that wasn’t close to my house.

I was the only local child.

I wasn’t going to give up my life, so I made a pact with myself that I would go out once a week, more in emergencies. I couldn’t take care of a late-stage Parkinson’s patient, not without quitting my job, ignoring my child, driving my husband away, and giving up any semblance of a life. I was so very grateful that she made the decision to move into that place, because at least it wasn’t my fault.

It was a lovely place she chose. But no matter how much you plan, institutions are not as kind as family, and as she deteriorated and moved from independent living to assisted care and then skilled nursing, the staff were increasingly detached and uncaring. They put her on anti-psychotics though she wasn’t psychotic. They parked her in the TV room with the rest of the blank-faced wheelchair-bound residents. They called her “Mary” instead of her last name, even though she had a doctorate in microbiology and was also an ordained Episcopal priest.

Because that’s the end of the triumphant narrative of institutionalizing your family members. Those stubborn elderly folks are right. Moving away from the comfort and familiarity of your life into an institution, even if the institution has good landscaping and pretty buildings, is basically being imprisoned. It is a swamp of disrespect.

All that is to say that nearly twenty years ago, I moved my husband and myself back into the city where there is public transportation. I renovated my house to put a bathroom on the first floor and get rid of the tub on the second floor, and put in grab bars and high toilets. I sold my car, and installed non-slip pads for the wooden stairs.

(Because falling on stairs, or on a rug, is like a light switch for becoming frail. Before fall, functional. After fall, if you’re lucky, you get a year or two of rehab, and if you’re not, you go into the hospital, get pneumonia or COVID there, and die.)

When my husband was in hospice, in a hospital bed on the first floor, I was damn glad that first floor bathroom was right there. I only needed it for a few weeks, mind you, but it was worth it.

But still, I have been fretting. Should I move into a smaller place? Should I get an apartment with no stairs? Should I be making a deposit on a retirement community? Should I make more improvements on this house, and plan for a future when I don’t even use the second floor, either?

I really don’t want to live in a retirement community. I don’t drink, for one thing, and for another I like being around younger people. And I don’t care what the brochures say, when they move you into the nursing floor, it’s a warehouse run by underpaid people who are on their last nerve.

I have been so good about planning for getting old, but unlike those elderly people fiercely fighting their adult children and trying to stay independent in a fetid space without sufficient food just so they don’t get consigned to eldercare prison, I know that at some point I will have to surrender my independence. I just don’t know when. It might be twenty years from now. It might be next year.

Or I might have a sudden stroke and die on the floor, like my cousin Jay.

So yesterday, I suddenly realized something, and I got on the phone with my adult kid. I asked, “Would you let me know when I need to move?” I said.

“Sure, Mommy,” they said. “Though you’ll probably tell me, and I’ll just agree with you.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m just tired of worrying about it.”

I feel so much better. It turns out that if I don’t have to worry, I can start thinking about maybe re-doing the kitchen or getting my bedroom painted.