Yes, we all get old.

I was laughing with our neighbor/friend Norm a while back about aging. It seems to be a topic that generally comes up while I'm sitting at the table with my elders. There was a doctor on television who spoke of how we all want to hold on to life. I may not be accurately quoting him, but this is what I remember, "Some of us just need to face the fact that one-hundred percent of us die!" I don't think we'll ever face that fact!
Let's say we have a terminal illness, but have fought it for numerous years, we'll still have hope. No one wants to die, nor does anyone want to truly think about the afterlife (unless of course you have true faith). Well, I believe that when we reach a certain point we're simply ready to go. I can't imagine that we'd want to live 5 months hooked up to a breathing machine, struggling every second for a breath. That has to be some form of hell, and your family is either there for you, or their not. They will either throw you in a home, or be kind enough to take you in theirs. I know when my grandmother lived with us for 5 years, completely bedridden, my mother held onto her the last month. We tried everything to remove the mucus from her lungs. When truly, she just wanted all of us to let her go. Life is bizarre, and Norm has told me plenty of times to live it joyfully while you can. I agree with that. Eventually we all have an end-I don't mean to be morbid. We'll truly never really know our purpose, so let's face reality. Even if that means denying it and living a chaotic life! Whatever floats your boat. I really believe that you can learn from people who have lived a plentiful life. Whether they've failed or succeeded. Well, according to societies standards anyway. He just sent me this email on his view about this little poem about a "crabby old man." Definitely an intense perspective:


The problem is that once the "covering" goes--the "tubing" rife with leaks and oozes--one is treated (especially by medical people who see it all the time) like the used up blubber we become if around long enough. And few (sometimes even those who know us best) will care about the history, the past, the nostalgia, the events, the highlights of life or the personal tales we all possess after so many years on the planet. Like rusting cars stripped of their best parts and left to rust in junkyards, there's little to recommend us. The view is certainly much better somewhere else--anywhere else. That shiny new sleek factory-smelling roadster in the showroom driven off with pride, as the newborn is carried from the hospital, soon morphs into just another possession destined to oxidize and tarnish and wrinkle and blotch into the unattractive hulk that "crabby old man" represents. It is the way of things in the world. For all time and not just our own. And I think of my two wives, who both left at 44. Too early for sure, but in a sense lucky that they avoided the last sad, inglorious, insulting, demeaning, disgusting days in a home or a hospital bed attached to tubes and catheters. Oregon, eh? Or Switzerland maybe? Or anywhere if the means exist. Hmmmmm. There's hope yet. N.

(I hope he's ok with me posting this-his perspective sometimes is pure genius)