I would want the old people here to have a real choice about where they live at the end — not just moved into a facility because the family cannot manage, but asked first, and listened to, and believed. I see it happen. A woman I knew, perfectly sharp, was moved to a home because her son worried. She died there in two years, not from illness but from being told she could not decide anymore. Autonomy at sixty-eight is not freedom to travel or start a business — it is the small authority over your own bath time, your own visitors, whether you eat at five or seven. The government talks about silver economy and active aging, but they do not ask us what we actually want. I want my daughter to promise me now, before I cannot ask, that if I become difficult to manage, she will ask me what I think first. Not out of pity. Out of respect for the person who raised her to think for herself.
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