This is #6 in a series of essays on aging.

Only once in my whole life did I hear my dad swear. It was when his doctor told him he could no longer drive. I was there in the doctor’s’ office; I had set up the encounter by asking the doctor to deliver the bad news. I didn’t have the nerve to tell my dad myself; and I’m not sure he would have heeded anybody less authoritative than the doctor.

My dad loved to drive, and taking away his driver’s licenses was like taking off his arm. I knew that. But his dementia had reached the point where he wasn’t safe. Several times he had gotten lost and I got a call from a random stranger whom he had encountered. “There’s a man here who says you know where he lives.”

How will it be when my time comes? I hope I’ll realize I’ve become a danger before anybody has to tell me, but maybe not. I might be as outraged and angry as my dad. In America, it’s hard to get anywhere without a driver’s license. If you live in Manhattan or an equivalent urban area, you can walk or take mass transit; but for 90% of America it’s drive or stay home.

Let’s not treat that coldly, as something that happens to people when they get old. Let’s realize it will most probably happen to us.

Suddenly you’re 15 again, and you have to ask for a ride. And that is just the beginning. Here comes the walker. Here comes the wheelchair. It’s infantilization. You lose the capacity to decide for yourself where you want to be and where you want to go. They might as well wrap you up in a blanket and stick a pacifier in your mouth.

Okay, that’s exaggerated. Most people don’t end up utterly demobilized. But the loss of mobility is part of aging, certainly. Can you find enough inner space—in your head, in your soul–that the loss of outer space is not like the end of life?