To make a long story short, I was talking to my mother who was having a down day- and who basically sees everyone around her rapidly declining with one health issue or another. I get it, it is depressing! My dinner mates now have to put on their readers or have stopped eating certain food groups due to health restrictions. ???  But what I do is distance myself as best I can… and carry on my merry lone way.

Today, I decided to go to her mostly vacant pool and naturally, she and I were the youngest ones there- aside from the overtired lifeguard. But while there, I watched my mother engag in a conversation with one woman, 11 years old than she, who fell and now maybe shouldn’t drive “according to her son”…. and another woman, who recently got into a car accident, and now has chronic to severe pain in her shoulder. And as I was going to get up to go home, a man with a walker walked past me… also on death’s driveway, and he was talking about how he couldn’t find his hearing aid.

So I’m thinking, perhaps this particular body of water is more a mikveh of death than a celebration of life, and perhaps the best solution is to enter and enter/exit the building between the hours of 10pm and 6 am in order to be sure their aids have tucked them all in for the night, and/or stay away from the pool.