Radiotopia from PRX.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richmond.

A few months ago, my brother, sister, and I helped move our mom into a retirement home.

She moved there with her husband Bob.

It's a pretty nice place, part 1950s hotel, part college dorm,

lots of activities. My mom was busier than she's been for a while. Just a few days ago,

I was visiting and I helped hang dozens of photos on the wall of their apartment. That wall is now a

visual timeline stretching almost eight decades. For most of human history, people didn't expect to live into their 80s and 90s.

But these days, that's the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population.

According to the latest study from the Center for Disease Control,

over 2 million people in the United States are living full-time in nursing or retirement communities.

When you spend so much of your life getting to the next stage, thinking about the next move,

what does it like to find yourself at the last place? Some time back, I became mildly obsessed with this question. So I spent months visiting one retirement community, Presbyterian homes in

Evanson, Illinois. I got to know some of the residents there, and I gave a few of them

tape recorders to keep audio diaries of their lives in retirement. Today on the Radio

Dires podcast, you bring you stories from the last place. Department A-103.

And it's a little two-room cubicle.

My name is Joseph G. Pine, P-E-I-N-E, the Hardway.

I'm 88 years old. I was a free soul up until a couple of years ago.

And after the last bout that I had with the hospital, came up with the, what you call

the Presbyterian homes, and said, this is the place to be. So that's

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