People who become more stubborn and unbearable to live with in their 60s and 70s usually aren’t trying to be difficult at all — they’re refusing, in the only language left available to them, to be managed instead of asked. The stubbornness is a person still insisting they’re the one living this life, not just occupying it

The word does something sneaky, too: it turns a disagreement into a character flaw and quietly hands the blame to whoever’s disagreeing. Hand over enough small decisions and staying a participant in your own life turns into something you have to fight for. Older people often mind how they’re spoken to at least as much as they mind what gets decided. I think about that rail more than almost anything else he left behind. Stubbornness, it turns out, was the only language left once nobody was asking him anything any more.