Another vote that kayaker has a coherent plan and does not deserve any crap for it. Whether or not it’s the plan *you’d *choose isn’t the point.
My situation isn’t too different from folks just above. Parents gone, no kids, some siblings scattered across the country with only a couple kids between all of them.
My wife and I need to be pretty self-sufficient to the very end for both of us. Which includes buying the help we need in addition to our own efforts. But since we can’t realistically plan on the next generation of family picking up any of the slack, much less all of it, we need to get our minds right now about how to deal with extended debility. When it arrives, either in the flash of a stroke or in the slow inexorable accretion of time & mileage, we need to be ready to do the smart thing.
Which may not be pulling out all the stops to impoverish ourself / selves while existing as miserable quasi-vegetables. I know some profoundly old people with serious challenges who nonetheless live a good albeit limited life. I also know some who’re miserable basket cases.
Hope for the best; prep for the worst. Plan your work then work your plan. Words to live (and die) better by.
I have several friends who have a parent or older relative who decided the time had come to stop living. Most were extremely ill, but at least two were just very old and frail. My friends were sad, of course, but not upset about their loved ones taking control of the end of their own life.
One, whose mother was in pain and dying of cancer, wishes her mother had told her in advance.
Not giving kayaker any grief (heh) about it, but I cannot help have but see his perspective as enough of an outlier that it made me do a doubletake along with some others.
He explicitly is not talking about taking his own life in preference to being extremely ill, being a quasi-vegetable, or even very old and frail, just in preference to having to accept some help from his children, or having to endure, at a relatively young age with presumptively many years of otherwise good health and being there for his family ahead, the post op recovery from a surgery that includes a thoracotomy.
It’s coherent and internally consistent but so could be saying I’d rather die than live without my cell phone.
They both seem like extreme positions to stake out is all.
Certainly a move by the OP is worth considering, if it is practical. But whose move is likely to be easier: a single person who is retired (and has quite possibly already downsized, or is willing to downsize, possessions) or that of a family that may very well include two adults with jobs they love or that it isn’t practical to replace, and kids in school (maybe even teenagers, for whom moving is especially tough). Who is likelier to have logistical problem selling/buying a new place to live and financing a mortgage? Who will need to limit their housing choices based on where the good school district is? Who might have been planning on sending their kids to a good state university where in-state tuition is affordable?
Seems to me that common sense suggests that, barring extraordinary circumstances, a move by the parent is going to be a lot less of a logistical nightmare.
Unrelated to the previous paragraphs but relevant to the thread: It’s a long story I won’t share here, but my parents seemed intent on making their end years as difficult as possible for me, until just before my mother’s actual death when an extraordinary series of coincidences conspired to make her passing much more logistically easy for me than anyone would have predicted. As a result, my husband and I are keenly aware of the possible burden we could inflict on our only child if we don’t make proper plans for our declining years. I’m 58 and he is 60, but we are already thinking in terms of how our needs for decades to come could place a burden on others.
Something we see a lot around here is folks who at age 65 moved down here from NY, NJ, etc., to enjoy their golden years in the golden sunshine.
And who at the onset of infirmity, death of spouse, or around age 80, whichever occurs first, are moving back up north to be near the adult kids who stayed in the northeast.
IOW, don’t assume she won’t decide she’d like to be local to you or one of your sibs. One scary stint in a hospital alone or watching a friend go through the same can be a real eye-opener for some folks.
That would be great. B/c she’s dropped not-so-subtle hints she’d like us to move closer to her and it’s unlikely either of us will do that any time soon. Maybe I should drop hints for them to move here to Utah…
Relatives of ours just went through this EXACT scenario. Lived in NJ most of their lives. Adult daughters both moved to the Midwest, so retired parents moved near them. At some point, parents moved to Florida, while visiting adult kids frequently (and in fact maintaining legal residency there). Mom died while visiting adult kids. Dad went back to FL long enough to pack his clothing / hold a memorial service, then went right back to daughter’s house in Midwest.
And my own in-laws: have lived in NJ, but went to FL as soon as they retired. MIL has said that if FIL goes first, she’s moving in with us. We’re mid-Atlantic, so actually not a bad compromise, but still… I would never move that far away from family just to get warmer weather. That’s what furnaces, car heaters, sweaters and gloves are for.
