Fall is upon us here in Misery. In a cycle as old as life itself, cool nights, warm days and that certain something in the air signal the coming winter to every living thing. As the foliage begins to fade, the activities of all creatures seem to take on more purpose, an air of preparation. The squirrels are cutting hickory nuts, the birds are flocking for migration, and I’ve laid in a supply of dark beer. Readiness is key.
Darkness comes not only in the form of beer, though. The days grow shorter, the nights longer, the increasing gloom augmenting middle-age melancholy as my thoughts drift inexorably toward mortality.
My maternal grandmother came to visit me recently. She is my last living grandparent, and won’t be around much longer. In truth, a lot of her is gone already. Her body and her mind both grow smaller and frailer with each passing day. The numbers tell the story; 86 years old, weighing 61 pounds. What sad irony that the woman who was once a large part of my world is now too small to activate the automatic air bag sensor in the passenger seat of a car. It is but one of many ways she no longer counts as an adult.
It is not often I consider the short life-span of my father’s side of my family a blessing, but I began to do just that while gazing upon my grandmother sitting in my living room, her body nothing more than translucent skin stretched over a bent and brittle skeleton, her mind aware of, but unable to follow or participate in the conversations going on around her. There are worse fates than dying young.
I was reading a book on the health syndicate and the doctor was talking about how good health care had prevented some old guy from several heart attacks and he was proud that the guy finally died from a car wreck. (He didn’t say if the feeble guy was the cause of the wreck or not).
I volunteered at a nursing home fixing hair for awhile (if you saw my own hairdoes you would see how desperate they were for help) and one lady just kept saying “I want to die” and they just ignored her. I argued with one doctor about how skewed statistics are since they do not recognize old age as a cause of death.
Seems we don’t have much to say about coming into this world or leaving it.
“When I die, I want to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandpa.
Not screaming like the passengers in his car!”
One thing I’ve definitely learned from being a nurse is that most people want to live long after a healthy young person looking at them thinks they would want to. (Man, that was a convoluted sentence).
I used to think I could never stand being a paraplegic, until I worked in a rehab center. Now I think I could be a paraplegic, but not a quad. That would suck.
I used to work in a nursing home, also, and I remember once a patient was dying and we went to be with her so she wouldn’t die alone, but she just kept breathing, so we lost interest.
I have heard from 2 honest people who sat by their dying relatives beds, that they too became impatient. Both said they considered putting a pillow over their loved ones head!
I am lucky enough to have both parents and both in-laws still alive and healthy, although they don’t think so. Their standards and mine differ.
They don’t like losing their hearing and eyesight, their physical strength and agility, their ability to drive, etc. But none of them have expressed an interest in dying.
You may feel different about dying young when you hit the end.
However, they may be planning on an early end to many of us. They keep announcing that the swine flu will “mutate” and become like the 1918 flu. I’d take them at their word. Especially since they dug up a 1918 flu victim and replicated the virus. For defensive purposes, of course.
We may not die alone after all!
I used to work in a nursing home, also, and I remember once a patient was dying and we went to be with her so she wouldn’t die alone, but she just kept breathing, so we lost interest.
Laughed so hard that the other library patrons in their cubicles looked up.