Independence and self-sufficiency

Last weekend was very pleasant. David and Desre came up from Kingston, bringing John along with them; Rebecca and Richard, and Jonathan also came over, and Dorothyanne dropped in briefly on her way to the 60th wedding anniversary of her aunt and uncle. So all but our other two grandchildren, Christina and Peter, were gathered here at our apartment for a family party (Christina was working in Peterborough and Peter was in South-east Asia, in Vietnam we think). Jonathan took some photos but we haven't seen these yet. When we do I may add one or two to this post. The original plan had been for all of us to gather in Rebecca's garden beside her pond, but it was a steamy-hot and very windy day, would have been unpleasant there whereas here we sat in air conditioned comfort; an afternoon thunderstorm confirmed that we had made a wise choice. Since then, Janet Wendy has become more breathless, even a little distressed at times, and very willing to use the ventilator to assist her respiratory muscles. She's just skin and bone now, not much muscle left on her neck, back, and arms, but still does her best to be independent. As her legs remain quite strong, she uses the walker to get about and despite our pleas to let us do things for her that she doesn't need to do, she continues on her independent way. For example at meal times she gets up from the table, gets behind her walker, and goes to the kitchen to change the volume on the radio, instead of asking me, or Sharon, to do this simple little thing. She likes to be independent and self sufficient, but it bothers us who try to help her that she wastes her limited energy in this way, with the result that she doesn't have enough left over to breathe comfortably. No amount of gentle persuasion, nagging or -- her word -- bullying, seems capable of changing her lifetime habit of independence and self-sufficiency. It's inevitable I suppose that she should be like this, and we just have to accept it.