If I needed help with bathing or dressing, how would I want that handled?

This may be the most vulnerable question in the chapter. Mobility is not only about walking. It is about privacy — the choreography of daily self-care that most of us have managed independently since childhood. The idea of needing assistance with bathing, dressing, or toileting touches something deep and often unspoken. Yet, at some point, many people do require this kind of help — temporarily after a surgery or hospitalization, or progressively with chronic illness or dementia. Families who have never discussed preferences often find themselves making deeply intimate decisions under pressure, in the middle of a medical crisis, with no sense of what their loved one actually wants. That is a preventable situation, and the conversation that prevents it does not need to be a long one. **The honest questions to ask yourself.** If the time came when you needed physical help with bathing or dressing, who would you want that to be? A family member? A professional caregiver you did not know personally? Someone of a specific gender? These are not small preferences — they matter enormously to the experience of receiving care. Would you prefer adaptive equipment — a shower chair, grab bars, a long-handled tool — that allowed you to remain independent longer before accepting hands-on help? Would you want to know in advance who would be helping you, and have some say in that choice? Think about what dignity means to you in this specific context. Not dignity in the abstract, but dignity in the bathroom, getting dressed in the morning. What does that look like? What would feel like a violation of it? **Why this conversation prevents collisions.** Without it, families make assumptions. Adult children sometimes assume they will step in and help physically, because it feels like the loving thing to do. Parents sometimes assume they would never want that, but have never said so. When the moment arrives, the collision between assumption and reality can be painful for everyone. A parent who has clearly expressed a preference for professional care over family care is not rejecting their child's love. They are protecting the relationship. They are saying: *I want you here as my child, not as my caregiver.* That is a gift of clarity, not a rejection.