re: #160 wheat-dogghazi-mailgate

This was a fate my mother sought to avoid. My dad toyed with the idea of retiring to some retirement community in Florida, until Mom put her foot down and said there was no way she was going to live with a bunch of old people. That ended the discussion.

That’s important, I think, if it can be avoided.

I am not a church-goer anymore, but for my parents it’s been a life-saver. They are doing some volunteer work—delivering meals, doing maintenance at a local shelter—several times a week, and the congregation is a diverse mix of old and young (it’s also fairly progressive; the regressive members who don’t like the gays split and built their own church out in a cornfield where they don’t have to mix so much with society). My folks (dad is 90 and mom 83) are still friends with some of them, but they’re not confined to a facility with them.