If I won the lottery, initially, I'd buy the house of my dreams and start all over again, without the hubby, kids and all the physical baggage and believe me there is A LOT of the latter.
Realistically, and in honesty, I'd find it hard to ditch the emotional attachments long term and live with myself, so I'd just buy the house and take everyone with me. I would however put my current abode on the market 'sold as seen', I'm sure somebody would purchase Haversham House if the price was right!
Reflecting on my last post where I mentioned the 'ever increasing elderly' population, given shed loads of money, I'd be forced to invest in a plan for approaching infirmity. Old age is great if it advances slowly and graciously and you have friends and family a plenty nearby to support you but sadly, this is seldom the case.
What disturbs me most about 'my dotage' is that having enjoyed childhood, survived adolescence, embraced being young free and single and resigned to responsibility as a mother, I'm going to be back to childhood with a grown up brain and a freaky body. Unless how we care for our elderly changes radically, I'll pray for senility and hope I'm away with the fairies, in my own private universe as far away from reality as possible.
Should I ever become unable to live independently, I want to be looked after by somebody who cares and doesn't perceive me as a burden. I don't want to be a breathing corpse, I want to be engaged with and the recognition that I still feel all the same things that everybody in younger, prettier casing does. In earnest, I hope that I have earned enough love and respect from my children that they will facilitate this. I don't expect them to take me in when I'm decrepit, they will have their own lives and families, I just don't want them to abandon me completely.
The concept of regressing and being dictated to about when to rise, sleep, what to eat and when concocts visions of basket weaving and does not appeal in the slightest. It's wrong on every level, if you don't want to play bingo or watch what's on telly with the world and his wife in the day room, you shouldn't have to.
If I win the lottery tomorrow I'm going to open a nursing home. I've had this plan, in anticipation, for some time. I've even head hunted staff, colleagues and ex colleagues who I know will bring something valuable to the party! I envisage a country setting not too far from the town, so that those who 'love to shop' still can. There will be an onsite chef who cooks what you want, when you want, a bar, a hair and beauty room, cinema and a gym full of those machines that move your limbs for you whilst Olivia Newton John's 'Let's Get Physical' blasts out from the stereo. Best of all there will be a bus so when the sun shines we can seek the sea, fish and chips in the paper and ice cream on the beach.
Given that the likelihood of me winning the lottery that big is slim, should anybody reading this be filthy rich and want to invest in my idea, I'm more than happy to enter into discussion. You'll all be relieved to know that I do have a plan B should my lotto dream fail to come to fruition. I have strictly instructed my children that under no circumstances should I be placed in the same nursing home as my husband. To be sat in a chair next to him, unable to escape, for the rest of my days makes me want to top myself now! I want to be with friends that are fun and up for a bit of mischief and don't care that I've wet myself, just that they made me laugh enough to.