I work at a place where all residents are wealthy, all needs are taken care of, and the place is beatifully decorated. "Assisted living" it's called. The area is safe and the land is being bought up everyday, dissapearing to massive homes built on rolling hills.

But nobody is happy. Nobody wants to live in this place.

They all smile, they all talk, laugh... but it's all a charade, the mask of living a life which has no meaning. Wrinkles in which the world struggles to abolish are all over... around their eyes, in their cheeks, and covering their hands, they take over the person. They become the grandma they used to remember.

Many are deaf, in walkers, wheelchairs... handicapped.

A man came in tonight, sitting with his wife Henrietta. She had just had a stroke, so he had to struggle to tell her the menu. He got up just to help her, with a profound patience one does not usually see. After the dinner, he gets her food wrapped and pushes her out in the wheelchair.

Others, arriving for dinner, gather around her.
"You look prettier every day Henrietta!" - A friendly acquantaince says to her, loudly with a smile.
Her husband proudly agrees, and even though her world is abstract and gargled, and even though her eyes only tell of confusion, he still has an obvious love and respect for this woman. He takes care of her every need, and when he says her name you can hear just how much he appreciates her- even when she's only 10% there.

Even though there's such proof of true love, and even though these people are well off, I always leave depressed. These people live forgotten to the world, waiting to be forgotten by time. They're examples of what we're to become- examples of something that nobody wants to see or believe.

I leave their homes, 8 o'clock and there's a total silence all around. I wait outside, sitting on the white intricately designed bench underneath the overhang, in a dim light against the darkness of night. There I sit alone, focusing in and out of the new memories I'm to always remember. The way he looked at her and could remember all she used to be, and how that image could replace the old disentigrating woman sitting in front of him.

Value your youth and health, but never forget what your fate will be.

Alzheimmers- Strokes- Diabetes- Athritis- Cancer-
the list will always go on.


Don't ever forget that it can all happen to you.

And to some of you, that it will happen to you.