The speaker's friend's mother, despite dying at around 89, experienced a significant decline in physical function a decade prior to death, losing the ability to perform activities like golf, gardening, and playing with grandchildren, and later developed dementia.

“her physical life had basically demised so significantly in the past decade that her actual death was almost just a matter of uh formality but she had lost the ability to do the things that mattered to her most a decade earlier so she couldn't play golf anymore because of her shoulder she couldn't Garden because of her knees and hips and back I mean she just couldn't she couldn't even play with her grandkids um and so she spent most of the last decade of her life largely uninvolved in anything and um you know did come down with dementia in the final year of her life”