The last three days of this travel adventure have been spent with my 97-year old mother-in-law in an Indiana assisted living facility. We’ll drive back to Chicago for our flight to Chicago tomorrow morning. It looks like they will be able to re-build Notre-Dame, but you can’t reconstruct the lives of the people who live here. Some move here by choice, enjoying the comfortable facilities and delicious prepared meals. Others, like my wife’s mother, were forced to leave their homes and seek assistance with her day-to-day activities.Some of the residents are not much older than me. This makes me worry about what’s ahead?

I’m wondering about how many years of independence I have left? Walkers and wheelchairs make travel more of a challenge, and some of these folks have trouble just getting down the hallway. Their dreams of retirement freedom are in many cases gone. They’ve given up their houses, cars, and other possessions to wait out their remaining years. To make matters worse, medical costs are depleting their life-long savings, and family members perhaps forced to support their unrewarding lifestyles. Money that was put aside to fulfill travel dreams are instead being spent on day-to-day care. It’s a retirement nightmare!

My mother-in-law is napping right now, after an exhausting stroll outdoors in her wheelchair. The TV is on but she only sees shadows moving on the screen. Her favorite pastime of reading is no longer possible, as the words jump around on the pages. Our only means of communicating with her is by writing on a white board with Magic Markers or via closed-captioning services on the phone. The letters are often too small for her to read and the process cumbersome. Her short term memory is also failing and we’re often repeating conversations. She has round-the-clock caregivers and hospice on top of general assisted living aids to the tune of about $4,000 a week. All for an unenviable existence.

I know that there are others who suffer more than she does, and there are moments that she still can enjoy. As a widow of 20 years, her life is certainly not what she dreamed. Only when her eyes are shut now can she see those dreams come true. As her kidneys continue to fail, she will mercifully doze-off more and more often. As we visit for these few days, her spirits have picked up, but as soon as we leave she’ll be once again crippled by depression.

I’m wishing that I can continue to run and travel for many years to come. I don’t want the same fate as my adopted father with Alzheimer’s, my birth father losing to heart issues, or now my elderly mother-in-law. Assisted Living is one thing, but living for the sake of living is tragic. Right now, I’m napping next to her in the couch, dreaming of Hawaii, sunbathing these wrinkles, and un-assisted living.