getting on

My Mum's gone to the UK, to the bedside of my (f)ailing Granny. Granny Jean will be 98 years old on Saturday and has finally succumbed to her age - only recently moving out of her own home and into an assisted living facility.
As so often happens, her mental and physical health has rapidly deteriorated since the move, she's ready.
A few years back my Mum came home from one of her annual trips to England and said Granny had noted how no one uses her first name anymore. Having outlived her husband and all her peers, she's either Mummy, Granny or Mrs S to most people in her life these days. I'd never even imagined that possibility before.

I recently went to the premiere of this fantastic documentary about a community of Afrikaans-speaking Argentinians living in Patagonia, longing for Africa - watch the trailer here

- and these old guys getting emotional about going 'home' before they died had me weeping during the screening.
(Admittedly I was terribly pre-menstrual that day but I still get prickly eyeballs thinking back on it.)

Then there's this article I read today - the last few lines particularly - and this Instagram account I spent some time on this morning, a quiet depiction of losing her parents to death and Alzheimer's, taking over their decrepit pets, putting their home to rights.

I've been having some very weepy moments about aging and dying of late.

Is this what 40 looks like?