We have built a whole apparatus, as a society, for the problem of the aging parent, and almost all of it is designed around distance — around adult children who love their parents and cannot be near them, and who, unable to provide the one thing that would actually help, which is daily presence, reach instead for the thing they can provide, which is a safe facility and a monthly check.

I did not blame Sherry for it.

Her fear was real and her distance was real, and you cannot commute from Arizona to check a stove.

But the solution they’d reached for would have solved their fear by ending Enid’s life-as-she-knew-it, trading her independence for their peace of mind and calling the trade safety. And the thing I could see, that they could not from where they stood, was that Enid did not need a facility.

She needed a person.