Reverting back to a helpless child as an adult is one of the most humiliating and helpless things anyone could ever experience. Wearing adult diapers and adult bibs, being unable to walk more than 20 feet or so without resting, becoming forgetful, and relying on others to care for youabsolutely dreadful for everyone involved. Yet the use of the chores that millions across the world face each and every day that they care for people at the special needs.

I've always figured that, when I get older, I was going to live alone in isolation. That way I could just slip away as opposed to being a burden on anyone else. I won't have to live being spoon fed, with the contents dripping down the front of my adult bib. I would much prefer dying than not being able to care for myself and having to wear an adult bib.

That is of course the typical reaction of a young person, but as the grim realities of age creep up on them, their attitude tends to change a bit. Is having to wear an adult bib enough reason to end it all? I wouldn't think so. What about adult diapers? Humiliating yes, but for many, life continues. And in that way, one by one the ravages of age creep up on you until it is not just adult bib and adult diaper, but senility and dementia, brittle bones and feeble mind, liver spots and arthritis. Wow, this has gotten really depressing hasn't it? I guess it basically comes down to the fact that you do the very best you can with what you have. As many people with faith would say, God will never give you anything that you cannot handle.

But just the same I think I would love quietly in seclusion in my late years. That way, as long as I am reasonably fit, I continue to live, but there is a built in safeguard to keep me from becoming a living vegetable by degrees. There is nothing so humiliating about an adult bib if you are the only one there eating, but as soon as it gets to be too much, or life starts to become too tired, I'll be able to do it.

Jump off a cliff if I'm feeling frisky, run in front of a car if I'm mischievous, or if I've mellowed in my days, simply overdose on sleep pills and call it a night forever. Sounds like a pretty easy way to take care of things doesn't it? People get so hung up on life that they will put up with any indignity from adult bib to permanent tube feeding and life support just to extend their life by another month or so. I've never really understood this because in my opinion it's not about the quantity of life, but the quality. Of course, to each his own.