Life: Pampers to Depends, requiring a parent at each end. To confront the future, youth need faith and bravery. Old age, with that future foreshortened, needs them too. For a few of us ancients it means the nursing home. For a few others a room in a child's home, where the sacrifice, though unvoiced, is obvious. Most old people will choose to stay put, until near the very end. But as our physical engines wear out, our children's concerns rev up. It takes quiet patience when sons Bill and Jon ask half-seriously if we're eating regularly or running out of money. They learn of floods in Virginia — or a snowstorm or hurricane — and call to see if we're all right.
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
