More Fun With Extreme Aging

So after a 4 week respite, on account of D2's Gville graduation and our family trip across the ocean, Wifey and I visited her parents yesterday. The Ds were invited, but thought maybe they'd avoid this first visit out of fear of intense guilt. They made a wise choice. We met my in laws, and due to inclement weather and a gathering in the social hall, spent the whole visit in my father in law's room. He was very happy to see all the pictures of Israel, and his nieces -- he has such great memories of the place. My mother in law -- not so much. Although she emerged from the Nazi camps, and met my father in law there, she has mostly negative memories of Israel. First, she couldn't get pregnant for a long time, and second, my father in law's family was tough on her. Wifey and I talked about this while we were in Israel. My father in law would have had a much happier life there, if he never moved to the US. He was a war hero, and knew the place well. He'd probably have gotten a job in the defense industry, and retired with a nice pension to a suburb of Haifa -- like his niece Tova did. In the US he was always sort of a fish out of water -- never succeeded financially, and was always ill at east. Too late now, but Wifey and I agree his life would have been better. Anyway, my mother in law was very upset with the driver Wifey found for her. He's been driving her for 2 years, but has financial issues. We gave him a loan last month, which I fully expect he'll never repay, but now he has been asking my mother in law as well. Red flag! Someone who attempts to get money from a 90 year old is not to be trusted, in my book. So we decided to tell him my mother in law was moving to Miami, and he'd no longer be needed. Now, of course, Wifey has to find a replacement -- not the easiest thing. The bigger issue is my mother in law's sadness, and lonliness. She's essentially a shut in -- never socializes, and only leaves her apartment twice a week to visit her husband at MJH. Wifey's health issues prevent her from driving there, and so it's a problem. I know these issues first hand, as I dealt with them with my own aging mother. I used to dread seeing Mom's number on my caller ID -- it usually meant some issue to her that was of outsized importance, and my dreaded 3 hour round trip drive to Delray. So Wifey has some thinking to do about her mother. She wants to move closer, and that may happen. All I keep thinking about is freaking Norman Rockwell. He painted all those warm portraits of smiling extended families -- sitting around holiday tables, everyone smiling. He left out wheelchairs, incontinence, and all the lousy trappings of aging. A wise man I know once said that love isn't just saying it, but being the one who changes the shitty diaper. And Wifey loves her mother, and does for her. The next phase seems upon us.