Life, Death, and the Uncomfortable In Between

Typically, we humans go about our days unaware of the passage of time. Today was not one of those days for me.

My mother-in-law has Alzheimer's, and over the past ten years we've seen her disease progress. As it's progressed, so has her living arrangements, from condo to spacious independent living apartment to small assisted living apartment. The inevitable came recently when the caregivers at her facility let us know she needed more care than could be provided in independent living, so today we moved her into the nursing home.

The senior community in which she lives has been wonderful for her, and my wife and I feel blessed she has been able to afford it and they accepted her. Even the nursing home area is much nicer than the ones I've visited in the past. But even with the amazing amount of support, assistance, and welcome they provided, there's still no hiding that a nursing home is a nursing home.

It's hard to leave a loved one--even one in need of constant care--in a nursing home. It's also hard to escape the personal emotions one has in visiting a nursing home. A walk down the hall is a little like looking into a magic mirror that simultaneously reflects both the past and the future.

Next to the door of each room are a pair of "memory boxes" containing small montages reflecting the lives of the two people who share that room. In front of a room containing a catatonic man uncomfortably slouched into an elaborate wheelchair are pictures of his younger self in his military uniform, a vision so healthy and vigorous it is nearly impossible to connect the dots from the photo to the man before me.

A little further down, next to a memory box showing a vibrant young teacher before a classroom of eager students, is a room with a closed door; from behind the door comes moaning, the kind that ushers from a person no longer able to communicate in any other fashion. The moaning may mean "I'm hungry, "I'm in pain," "I'm lonely," or perhaps merely, "I'm still alive."

All of the memory boxes contain images that could be me or the people I know right now, except for the hair and clothing styles. The hallway is lined with images of people drinking, working, traveling, partying, playing--enjoying life to the fullest. Vigorous and honest smiles beam from every wall, and none of the smiles say, "Someday I'm going to be waiting for death in a nursing home."

We don't really get a vote in our fates. We can live right, eat healthy, and exercise and still end up dying prematurely. Smokers can outlive non-smokers, the sedentary can live longer than the active, and people who eat fast food ten times a week can outlast vegetarians. We can sway fate, but we can't control it. Some of you reading this will die young (or at least younger). Some of you may be lucky enough to stay vibrant, lucid, and ambulatory into your 80s. But many of us, given the "advances" in health care, will grow to outlive our own lives.

Am I being depressing? Well, today was a little depressing. But it was also a great reminder--you get one shot at life; one chance to live each and every day. I can't go back and relive my 20th, 30th or 40th years on this planet, but I can impact the way I live my 45th year and beyond.

With some luck, I'll have 30 or 35 years before I end up sharing a room with a stranger, all of my worldly possessions reduced to what can fit on a single desk, my eyes, legs, hips, hands, ears and mind failing me. Until my choices are taken away by fate, the only thing that can fail me is me.

I wonder what the shadow box outside my room will say. I guess I can wait to see, or I can start filling it now.