My mother the gardener.

M Y MOTHER DIED AT AGE 90 YEARS FROM complications of a fall at home. The “at home” part was the triumph of her last decade. Having spent 3 years in a German slave camp during World War II, she was terrified of institutional settings. Assistedliving facilities and nursing homes were tantamount to prisons, in my mother’s view, and woe to anyone who suggested otherwise. As a HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) designee, power of attorney holder, and lifelong confidant, I had been drilled from an early age to go to the mat with anyone who threatened her freedom to live as she wanted. This is your job, she commanded—over and over again until I wanted to cover my ears. Yet I understood the fear that underlay these 2-fisted pronouncements and promised to do my best. And so I did. When hearing and cognitive losses set in during her 80s, I began accompanying my mother to physicians’ appointments. At first I sat quietly—my mother wanted me there, but she also wanted to run the show. Over time though, she became more tentative and anxious about medical procedures that she had once handled stoically. This led me to question the need for routinely prescribed screening procedures like Papanicolaou tests and mammograms. My mother did not sleep for days beforehand—were they really necessary?