LJ, you are so right about us internalizing all of this and considering what it's going to be like for us.

chatty, does your mom have many living friends or family?
I hate to say it, but there's soemthing to dropping dead of a heart attack. I know it's a shock to everyone left behind, but it's much better than living a long and lonely life, or suffering with some disease.

Dotsie, yes my mom has many relatives all around her in Indiana. Her sister is 90 and still alive, other sibblings as well still alive. She has friends from work that love and visit her sometimes and she is very well known in the town she lives in as she and my stepdad operated a bakery for many years and know everyone. But most stay to themselves and their own familys, she also doesn't get around as much as before so sometimes is lonely BUT hell, we're all lonely sometimes even those of us with family still around constantly. To me loniliness is a natural emotion like any other that rears its ugly head from time to time...
Edelweiss and Gims, I adore my mother and since we are a thousand miles apart neither one gets on the others nerves but even on the phone mom can get me riled up, BUT shes my mom, old, and I respect that fact so I never argue or even seem upset to her. After I hang up sometimes I just scream into a pillow...Ah! And that feels better...

I can so relate! My mom walked into my kitchen once, slammed her hand down on counter and said,
I'm not happy!" (She had Parkinson's and later developed Alzheimer's).
I looked at her--and she was basically demanding that I DO something--not that it's in anybody's ability to make someone else feel anything.
That's when I realized, the only person's happiness I could do anything about was my own.
I loved the quote you found--how very true.
Seek your own happiness and let it spill out to the world.
Nice to meet you.
~Carol O'Dell

Like wise Carol, and hope to see more of you in the forum...