Serious content alert. Okay, if you haven’t dealt with this yet, you are fortunate. If you don’t have aging parents or you don’t have children, then it may not apply. For many, many people though, one of the most difficult things that you will face is the realization that your parent/parents should no longer be driving. I don’t deal in much detail with that in my book, Your Room at the End: Thoughts About Aging We’d Rather Avoid. However, it is draining on multiple levels. I’ll use my uncle as an example. My grandfather, bless his heart, got to the point where he was an absolute menace on the road. Fortunately, they lived in a small town and people knew to get out of his way. My uncle despaired of what to do as all suggestions to hand over his keys were met with staunch denial of a problem. A health issue finally resolved it, but there was still an undercurrent of resentment at the loss of independence. That same uncle, however, when it was he who should no longer drive was just as adamant as my grandfather had been that his son (my cousin) was wildly exaggerating about why he should hand over the keys.

My father and I do not always agree on everything, although most of that belongs in the past. He had already cut back on driving – nothing at night and nothing outside of their small town. Still, there was concern. The fact that he had lost sight in one eye was part of it, but that wasn’t all. And thankfully, within a very short time of voluntarily moving to an assisted living place, he determined that if it wasn’t safe for them to be in a house alone any longer, that was probably also a good time to give up driving. May you all be so lucky.