95

My father's father celebrated his 95th birthday this weekend. (This is my biological family, nothing to do with my step-dad.) When I saw him yesterday he was in fine form, looking nowhere near ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.

My Buby and Zaidy have a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted-living facility called The Terrace. They have a cleaning service; one meal per day is provided to them in the communal dining room (they have a kitchenette for the other meals); and almost everything they could want or need is available on the premises. In fact, it's so comfortable and convenient that Ken and I are tempted to move in.

You can access all of these things without leaving the building: banking services, a general store, the hairdresser, the dentist, a health clinic, a library, a swimming pool, a gym, two synagogues (mild and hardcore), an arts-and-crafts room, a greenhouse complete with chirping songbirds, and a ton of on-site programs, lectures, parties, and clubs. So, does anyone else want to move in with us? Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

OK, so it's not exactly Club Med. If you're in your early 80's here, you're still young, just one of the new kids. But if you have to end up somewhere near the end of your life, better here than a smelly nursing home. Relatively speaking, the joint is jumping.

It works well for my grandparents. My Buby, 5 feet tall and fiercely independent, is over 90 now but hasn't slowed down one bit. Her mind is as sharp as a tack and she moves quickly. First thing when I walk through the door, she always throws her arms around my neck and squeezes hard. Half-hug, half-wrestling hold. That's how she rolls. My Zaidy requires constant care, but even with the option of a long-term care facility just a block away, she won't give him up. Even though it would mean she could get out more. They are completely devoted to each other.

My Zaidy's brain has been slowly disorganizing itself over the years. Sometimes he seems quite lucid, but mostly he gets lost in the grey space between now and his memories. Yesterday he kept asking after my father, Isaac the hat maker. Isaac is some long-dead relative I've never heard of. My Buby gently corrects him each time.

She has to hide his shoes at night, lest he go wandering while she's asleep. One time he got half-way across the city on his own, with no money. We figure that well-meaning people must have given him lifts, and/or the streetcar driver didn't argue when he couldn't pay the fare. The police found him standing on a street corner downtown. He used to own an auto service station on that corner, 50 years ago. It's been long since torn down. He knew exactly where he was going, in space. It was in time that he got lost.

I'm glad he stuck around in the land of the living for one more year. He gazes at me with his bright, ice-blue eyes, and tells me "you can't buy good feelings with people". Sometimes he knows exactly who I am, and he sings the same song we used to sing together when I was a little girl and he was driving me home from their house. Yeah, you can't buy that.

My Zaidy says "They're gonna have to shoot me!" I think that means he's planning on hanging around until we're ready to celebrate his 96th.