Time to visit this forum! It seems my MIL will be moving to our city in about a year. She will be 83 then. She lives in Florida in a condo community now, but not only is my FIL is gone, most of her friends there are, too, so there's not much to hold her there anymore. She figures (quite sensibly) that it is likely that at some point she won't be able to live on her own and will have to move to some sort of senior housing, so she wants to do it before she is incapacitated and still young enough to make new friends.

It will be here, not my SIL's city, because she is kind of afraid of SIL and more comfortable with us, and also because it isn't quite as cold here, and she has arthritis and suffers in the cold.

Last time she was here, we happened to pass the new (gorgeous) senior apartments where our best friends' mom just moved and pointed it out so she could see it and then have a mental picture of how nice it is in case she ever had to move here suddenly (like a stroke or something) -- we wanted her not to feel like she was coming to some awful warehouse or dreary medical facility. Actually, it's fantastic; I just hope we can afford it. We assured her that she could afford it, but the truth is she will be able to because we will subsidize it. If we're lucky, SIL will pitch in, but I won't count on it.

Well, THAT sure worked -- we didn't expect her to make short-term plans, but our daughter just went to visit her and came back with the report that that's pretty much all she talked about.

So be it. As my own mom pointed out, it was probably going to happen eventually anyway, so it's really just that it is sooner than we'd envisioned.

I am bracing myself, because I know it will be difficult in some ways and irritating in others (you should have seen the expression on my husband's face -- and she's HIS mom). She's a good person, she just can be very silly about nonsense and make a huge fuss over EVERYTHING all the time. It's nothing awful or mean, it just wears everyone out -- kind of a "no good deed goes unpunished" thing. And fortunately, when it's actually something that really is important, she isn't silly at all -- she is a real grown up who steps up to the plate and does great. We do love her a lot. Still, I have always dreaded living in the same city with her.

I am so glad that I read so many posts about mothers in law on these forums over the years. I am going to try hard to focus on the positive parts of having her here for her last years and to think of how SHE feels, not just how we feel or what our friends will think of her (she is rather a "character"). And I also know that in this case, as in every other situation life throws us, it will NOT be exactly as we anticipate. Some things we dread won't be problems at all, and some problems we don't anticipate will occur -- but the same is true of the up side: there will be benefits and joys that come of this that I can't anticipate now, but that will indeed be there if I am wise enough to see them.

And I know that I will find good advice and tips and, when necessary, a place to vent, on this forum.