Growing old is an inevitability, but it's not something that I ever thought about before I started visiting Hillview Health Care Center, my grandmother's nursing home.

This afternoon I knocked on the door as I always do -- three knocks and poke my head in -- and said, "Hello ladies," addressing my grandmother and her roommate Norma. Norma was watching "The Match Game P.M.," and my grandmother was nowhere to be found. Norma informed me that she was in the Rec Room for some kind of music. I was ecstatic that she had gotten out of the room to do something, so I rushed to the Rec Room to enjoy whatever was happening along with her.

I almost changed my mind when I heard accordion music echoing down the hallway. God. Of course. Polkas, waltzes, Irish medleys, all on the accordion. Of course.

I entered the Rec Room and saw my grandmother immediately. I sat down next to her and started doing everything I could to avoid the accordion that seemed to be overpowering every one of my senses. It was like I could smell the damn thing.

I started looking around the room at the countless others that were there. Aging men and women, all comforted by the obnoxious sound, staring around the room with glassy eyes, most mouthing lyrics. A smile crossed my face when I imagined what kind of music I'd be listening to when I was at this place in my life. Would they play Britney Spears? Would it be on an accordion?

All of a sudden I started to think about what it would really be like to be in that place... to be eighty-five and in a nursing home ("Health Care Center"), having loved ones visit me (if I was lucky), have the nurses be friendly, but not too friendly... to feel all alone in a sea of others just like me.

As my grandmother and I walked back to her room, I couldn't shake the thoughts and started thinking about everything I saw as if it were for me. Someday I will be laying in a hospital bed, mouth agape, with a dark pastel green blanket tucked around my body. Someday I will be wheeled down to the Rec Room for cribbage. Someday I will have to eat that cardboard dinner roll. Someday I will have to put in my teeth before dinner. It was surreal. I had never considered any of this before. The inevitability of getting old had always been there, but it was staring me in the face.

I visited with my grandmother for awhile and finally said goodbye. As I left, the thoughts still lingered. All of a sudden I realized that I would be walking through Hallway 100 on the way out. Hallway 100 is reserved for the people whose mental capacity had completely vanished. The inhabitants were shells of their former selves. Their bodies were there, but their minds did not exist. It's like real, live zombies, but zombies who used to be full of life, zombies who have families and loved ones, zombies who used to be... just like me.

I tried to walk through it as quickly as possible because I was feeling incredibly uncomfortable. There was a woman in a wheelchair sitting outside her room staring at the tiles on the ground. I smiled politely at her, and she grabbed my jeans. She stared at me with a panicked look and asked me frantically what temperature it was and why I hadn't changed it like I had promised to. I smiled again, apologized, and stepped out of her grasp. I continued down the hallway, quickening my steps, and I was hit with a wave of intense sadness. Was this me? Was this my future? Am I going to end up in Hallway 100?

Death and dying is an inevitability that I've been faced with a lot in the last four years... my grandfather, my mom's aunt, a friend of the family, my grandmother (UT), and now my other grandmother. It's all that time before it happens that I never thought about. The hospitals and medications and blood pressure and osteoporosis and arthritis and creaky joints and walkers and canes and wheelchairs and "quality of life" and IVs and feeding tubes and placation vs. honesty and more pills and bland food and fear of falling and hunching and hearing loss and memory loss and dementia and confusion and Hallway 100.

In a few weeks I will be 22 and I am terrified to be old.