The nursery at RiverSpring Residences in the Bronx is a sunny, inviting space outfitted with a bassinet, a crib with a musical mobile, a few toys, bottles, picture books for bedtime reading and a rack of clothing in tiny sizes.
The other morning, Wilma Rosa was there trying to soothe one of its cranky, small charges. “What’s the matter, baby?” she crooned, patting the complainer’s back. “You OK? I want you to go to sleep for a little while.”
It happened more than a decade ago, but the moment remains with her.
Sara Stewart was talking at the dining room table with her mother, Barbara Cole, 86, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Ms. Stewart, then 59, a lawyer, was making one of her extended visits from out of state.
Two or three years earlier, Ms. Cole had begun showing troubling signs of dementia, probably from a series of small strokes. “I didn’t want to yank her out of her home,” Ms. Stewart said.
A prime example of elderspeak: Cindy Smith was visiting with her father in his assisted living apartment in Roseville, Calif. An aide who was trying to induce him to do something — Ms. Smith no longer remembers exactly what — said, “Let me help you, sweetheart.”
Even before Georgia Outlaw met her new nephrologist, she had made her decision: Although her kidneys were failing, she didn’t want to begin dialysis.
Ms. Outlaw, 77, a retired social worker and pastor in Williamston, N.C., knew many relatives and friends with advanced kidney disease. She watched them travel to dialysis centers three times a week, month after month, to spend hours having waste and excess fluids flushed from their blood.
The encounter happened years ago, but Beverly K. Brandt remembers it vividly.
She was leaving her office at Arizona State University, where she taught design history, to run an errand for her ailing stepfather. He had moved into a retirement community nearby after his wife, Dr. Brandt’s mother, died of cancer.
Apartment hunting in Brooklyn earlier this year was the predictable nightmare.
I saw a place on Fifth Street that looked perfectly acceptable except that it had no closets. Not one.