Today, one friend’s estranged and abusive father drove to their house on Father’s Day to try to re-establish communication, and my friend had to call the police to have him removed.

Also today, a friend told me her mother-in-law, visiting from out of state, turns out to be severely disabled but in denial and refusing any sensible solutions, and the family is reacting as families do, which is to be as passive as possible in the hopes that someone else will take over.

A third friend’s wife recently moved her elderly bedridden mother into the house, which sounds like a sensible solution, the good old-fashioned family caregiving thing, except that now my friend is suffering through having someone else’s mother living with them.

A fourth friend mentioned that she is worried about a mutual acquaintance of ours, who seems to be getting more confused and lives by herself; she repeats herself and forgets things.

These situations have little in common except that (a) my friends are confiding about them to me and (b) the difficult people involved are all around my age.

I have too many friends who are younger than I am, I reflect. It doesn’t strike them as at all odd that they are confiding in me about dealing with people who are my age, because after all, I am upright, mobile, coherent, and close to my adult child. But I am right spang in the middle of the demographic of Older Family Member, no matter what they think of me.

I do my best to help them think through what you have to do when old people are both dependent and stubborn, because I have been in their situation. I was my mother’s carer, but I was sensible enough to draw firm boundaries, and she was sensible enough to check herself into a life care community, even if she hated her loss of freedom as she gradually moved through their pipeline to skilled nursing. That didn’t make the situation easier on either of us, and those ten years were often hellish. And ludicrous. And full of grief and fury. Because I had boundaries I established in the beginning, though, I was able to keep working full time, save for retirement, and pay off my debts so that I could prepare for my own eventual old age.

One of my friends said confidently today that her mother-in-law would be able to afford a nursing home because she has $800,000 saved, as well as a house. I murmured quietly that it probably isn’t enough. I happen to know that it definitely isn’t enough, because that’s pretty much what I have; I also have long-term care insurance, when most people my age don’t, and I live where it’s easy to get around if you don’t drive, but I could only afford a few years of nursing care if I needed it.

It’s not just age that puts us all one health problem away from absolute disaster and depending on the kindness of other people; it’s just that the probability gets so much higher when you’re older, until it reaches 100% if you don’t have a fatal stroke or heart attack.

That is to say, I try very hard not to be difficult, and I have been (unlike many people my age) actively preparing to be old for a couple of decades now, but there’s only so much I can control anything at all.