Dinner conversation

 Our friends from Florence are excellent conversationalists.

We enjoy their company and the ease with which we jump from one topic to another, often about our respective families, grandkids and what's going on with all of them. 

Now that all four of us are fully vaccinated, we jumped at the chance to have them over to our house for dinner, and those long-awaited hugs we haven't had for over a year. We had a lot of home improvement projects to show them. Covid gave us a chance to use our abundantly free time to paint, purchase new office furniture and continue the rehabbing of the house we bought three years ago that has required constant upgrading. 

Our friends appropriately oohed and aahed over our work. They will be welcome to come back since we thrive on praise and compliments.

Sometime between dinner and the delicious dessert they brought, the conversation turned to our ages and what might be coming in future years. Don't know how it got started, really; perhaps talking about our homes and how long we might be able to continue to live independently in a house that requires care. 

Anyway, we discussed our respective plans for talking with our kids about how we want to grow older. It started when, not long ago and out of the clear blue, our older daughter and her husband asked when we would consider turning over our car keys, being unable to drive safely any longer.

I admit that question threw me. Yes, I'll be 80 in August, a really big number I still can't wrap my head around easily. After all, I think of people who reach 80 as weaker, less sharp and infirm in some ways. But 80 means nothing to me except another year gone by, another year of trying my best to stay healthy and keep doing the work I enjoy.

But the question did haunt Howard and me. We started thinking seriously that our kids needed to know how we wanted to live out our days when we could no longer remain in our home or when we needed help to do so. That's a discussion we never had with them. And frankly, we haven't talked about it much between the two of us, either. Not the happiest of topics.

So we are taking stock of where we are now...preparing to update our wills, storing our advance directives and other important papers in an easily accessible place known to the kids and finally telling them we would like a family meeting this summer to talk about the whole topic of being the children of parents who need them.

Covid made me think about that. I thought long and hard about contracting the illness and not surviving. Would the kids know where things were? Would they know to whom I wanted certain things given? What would Dad do? How could they help him?

Now, healthy still and trying to be proactive, Howard and I will have that meeting. Then everyone can breathe easier, knowing what their roles will be someday down the road. Certainly not at 80.