Entering "Another Country"

I am re-reading portions of Mary Pipher's outstanding book, Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders. It just so happens that we are also visiting our friend Nate in southern California at the moment. He has Alzheimer's and is in a care facility. We visited him for lunch yesterday for the first time.
     The combination of these two and the fact that I will turn 50 in two months has given me pause to consider aging.
     When I am around people who are toward the end of their lives (the "old-old" as Pipher calls them) I am deeply humbled by their will to live and the ability to live with discomfort, pain, and suffering.
     AND, to live in the moment (all we have suddenly) which creates something of a "holiness," a "sacred ground." Put another way:
"You have set the powers of the four quarters of the earth to cross each other. You have made me cross the good road and the road of difficulties, and where they cross, the place is holy." ~ Black Elk