Elderland is a house, village, town, county, state, world. Its borders are defined by the length of the tether from the caregiver to the senior – as far as across the world, as close as the next chair. It is a world of battles lost and won, of successes defined and discarded.

It is independence at the mercy of the turn of a heel or the missed beat of a weak, old heart. It is the distance from standing carefully with your cane to lying broken on the floor. It is the fear not of dying but of falling. It is the little injuries that are inflicted so easily and take so long and so much effort to heal. It is the one fall that changes it all.

It’s the shrugs and wan smiles that cover your struggle to keep up. It’s clinging to the subject at the beginning of the sentence, only to feel it slip from your grasp before the end. It’?s people shouting, when it would help so much if they would just speak more slowly. It’s the constant, tiresome repetition.