My grandmother is finally forgetting to be a psychotic alcoholic who throws hot coffee on other nursing home residents (she's in her...seventh nursing home now?) It's probably a good thing for all parties.
Keep in mind, when my parents were dating back in 1990-91, my father didn't introduce my mother to my grandmother because he was afraid it would blow up in his face. His fears were proven right when she got drunk at the wedding rehearsal dinner and caused some sort of a scene. Since then (despite my father's reassurances that she was not long for this world at the time of their wedding), she's survived being found in her upside-down car on the side of the interstate, being in her car while it was dragged by an eighteen-wheeler for a few miles, getting drunk on Christmas Eve when I was five and cracking her head on the sidewalk, and doing this on a diet of two packs of cigarettes and a gallon of wine a day.
Between my grandmother living a quarter-century beyond her reasonably allotted span, my grandfather being alive and kicking as ever at the age of 78 despite having been a gay man in the late 80s and early 90s, and my other grandfather still driving across the country in his RV in his 70s, I'm pretty optimistic about my lifespan.
The lifespan of those around them, on the other hand....
Especially her pets. Hoo boy. My grandmother enjoyed the company of small dogs, like many women of her age, but was far too addled to keep them. What would happen is that she would adopt a small dog- usually a Yorkshire Terrier or something else diminutive and odious- keep it for a while, then decide she didn't want it any more and drive it a few miles away and abandon it on the side of the road. Then a month or two later she would decide she wanted another small dog and repeat the process. It might have been for the better that her dogs
were abandoned after a while, as when we cleaned out her house we discovered some chicken that had been saved for the dogs in her fridge. It had the consistency of gelatin and had turned green.
She also had a canary that she would let fly around the nursing home. My aunt and uncle saved that one, and it now lives happily at their house.