This week my family helped move my grandma into an assisted living facility.

There were about 20 of us there, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Four generations, packing and organizing, trying to make the transition as smooth as possible.

And yet, I couldn’t help but feel profoundly sad. My grandpa died a couple years ago, suddenly, and my grandma has been deeply lonely ever since. Losing a partner after 50+ years will do that.

She stood there, fading in and out of lucidity, her nervous system coping with the overwhelm of leaving her home for the last time.

And as much as we tried to help, there was something heartbreaking about the unceremonious energy of it all. Boxes moving, tasks getting done, a job that had to be finished.

At one point, when we got her settled into the new facility, the thought came to me: this is the last time she will ever move. And underneath that, a deeper truth: she will die here.

Moments like this are confrontations with mortality. And as hard as they are, they are necessary. They remind us that no one escapes this. We all grow old. We all die.

I haven’t spent much time in assisted living facilities, and I’m conflicted. Like all things, there’s beauty, the social connection, the engagement, the care. But there’s also ugliness, the sense of removing the elderly from view, as if we don’t want to be reminded of what awaits us.

I want to live in a world where elderhood is honored as an essential, sacred part of the human experience.

And when I think about that, I realize: the daily investments I make in myself aren’t just for right now. They are for decades from now, for a healthy body, a clear mind, and a soul that has matured into wisdom.

Of course, fate has its own plan. None of us are immune to illness, suffering, or death. But my hope is that my choices now give me the best chance to arrive at the end initiated—as an elder, not just an old man.

And maybe that’s the real work we share, to live today in a way that prepares us for elderhood, and to treat the elders among us as the mirrors of where we’re headed.

With love,

Christian