Sad news alert. My mother-in-law was either 91 or 92 in the spring and she has been in assisted living for the past couple of years. Her situation is a little different from my father who has severe short-term memory loss, but is otherwise doing pretty well. In her case, she has sporadic bouts of confusion, especially with sequence of events, but can generally work through everything fairly quickly. Health-wise, she has had more conditions than my father although managing with appropriate medication and physician’s care. We received the text yesterday she’s been entered into hospice and there probably isn’t much time. My sister-in-law and her family live nearby and have been stalwart in their devotion to her. At the moment, we will wait until we know more since how one responds in hospice can be quite varied. Back when my father called me because his older brother had been placed in hospice I flew the next day to Louisiana in order to be available to drive them to Missouri. After five days elapsed (it may have been four), I returned home and I think it was another two days before he passed. We had in the meantime made other arrangements for the drive to Missouri.

The irony of this is we normally travel to Georgia to be with my husband’s family at Thanksgiving. We were unable to do so last year because of an unexpected conflict and were in the midst of making plans for the trip. I doubt his mother will be able to linger for 3 weeks, but it is possible. I won’t be posting anything to social media yet since we aren’t certain of what will happen.