Caring for my 91-year-old mom has been, and still is, an enlightening experience. While there have been times when her aging brain, combined with her generally "you're not the boss of me" attitude, have made for some aggravating moments. But those are mostly forgotten and certainly forgiven, when I reflect on what valuable lessons I'm learning about that stage of human life we prefer not to imagine.

Mom's been living in a granny flat behind my garage for nearly twenty-five years now. When I first started coaxing her to move in with me, I was single and so was she. She was still active and I saw many advantages to having a live-in gardener, pet sitter, etc. I couldn't really imagine her growing old and becoming feeble of mind and body even though in theory, it was probable. Thankfully, Mom had the good sense to drag her feet, knowing that at forty, I wasn't finished with serial monogamy. When I brought Mike home from a mountain bike trip just a few months later, and moved him into what would have been her bedroom, her caution was validated. As luck would have it, he liked the idea of having her live with us and promptly built her a granny flat.

For many years we enjoyed our little family of three. Mike and Mom love to argue; and so, they spent hours discussing a topic to death only to swap sides a few days later and beat it to death again. Mom kept our yard looking like a park and we had live in security. I had the pleasure of my best friend's company any time I wanted. But gradually, age took its toll.

Today Mom mostly sits in her Lazy Boy recliner watching TV or doing crossword and jigsaw puzzles. He memory is almost gone but she still functions well enough to be home alone for several hours at a time. When she suffered a noticeable slip in her cognitive abilities a couple of weeks ago, I was alarmed. She recovered somewhat so I chalked it up to a little dehydration and started pushing her to drink more water.  It started me thinking about end-of-life things and how little I know about them. Like, if you find Mum dead in the bed, who ya gonna call?

I just finished reading Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach so, of course, I am thinking about all the options. When she wrote the book in 2003, there was a new technology, developed by a woman in Sweden, that entailed freeze drying a corpse and breaking it into compostable fragments. A human body would return to nutrient rich earth in a short time without any adverse impact environmentally. So far, it doesn't look like the practice has caught on, at least not in my area, as I didn't find any freeze drying facilities when I Googled it. However, her book did point out the numerous ways a cadaver can be utilized in the scientific community for the benefit of future generations. None of these uses are for contemplation by the squeamish so I won't describe them here, but do read the book if you are even slightly interested. Mary Roach can make you laugh out loud even when describing a field where cadavers are scattered about to measure rates of decomposition of various parts under different conditions.

This afternoon, I decided to knuckle under and do the research to learn what happens, or rather what I have to do to make it happen, when someone dies. First I went back to talk to Mom to make sure that she didn't care if they used her body for a crash dummy when she was through with it. She hadn't considered that option before but figured if it turned out to be cheaper than cremation, she was all for it. She may not remember much but she hasn't changed her penurious way of thinking. She told me to do whatever was the easiest and cheapest for me. Ever the considerate one, she added that, even though she no longer had diarrhea, she was wearing the adult diapers to bed at night (my sister had provided them when mom had diarrhea last week).  I asked if she had experienced any leakage in that area and she said no, but in case she died in bed, she thought it might save the mattress. How can you not love what's left of a mom like that?