This story in the local news reminded me again (as if I needed reminders!) how the cheerful chumps who say, “Old age beats the alternative!” need a good sock in the jaw:
Every other weekend I visit my mother in assisted-living. A very good facility, but still everyone there has lost their independence and knows they’ve come there to die. They’re waited on by underpaid, overworked staff, of varying degrees of competence, and are too often treated like toddlers.
The ones who still have their brains have lost their bodies to strokes, arthritis, blindness, deafness. Many have lost their short- or long-term memory. When they can remember what their lives used to be like, it just depresses them. It’s not like Bayview on Waiting for God. There are no Diana Trents.
Sure, you occasionally hear about 97-year-old women who do cartwheels and write books and go partying. But for every one of them . . . I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to dying in my 60s or 70s. And if I don’t, I will, if you know what I mean. My sister and I have a “pillow over the face” pact with one another.
My parents and I visited my grandfather over the weekend. He’s in a nursing home after multiple trips to the hospital in the last 2 months. He’s on a feeding tube now, and all he wants is to go home. He doesn’t know where he is or why he’s there, although at least he does still recognize us. I don’t want to end up like that. He’s in pain, although I don’t think it’s as severe as some people, he can’t take care of himself, he can’t walk, he can’t eat. I know the human desire to live is very strong, but at some point you have to wonder “why?” I hope someone has the compassion to put me out of my misery before I end up like that.
Or if you like, when the time comes you could always slip some arsenic into your tea at the Algonquin, so that you can shuffle off this mortal coil in civilized surroundings. Just tip the waiters a little extra for discreet handling of your remains.
And I’m with you–no way am I going to allow myself to slide into slow decay. I plan on going the Harold and Maude route–doing myself in while I still have all my faculties.
I’m pretty sure I did die back when I was young, healthy and not easily satiated after one of those too far frequent nights of debauchery. Everything that’s happened since is just some figment of my final synapse-firing imagination determined to piss me off.
A guy I work with says he’s on the “Early Exit” Plan - don’t take too good care of yourself so you don’t last too long. He may be kidding. Probably not completely.
I keep wondering, why am I taking cholesterol pills—to live longer? My sister says, “So you won’t have a stroke and wind up like Mom,” and I remind her of the “pillow over the face” pact.
I agree, but I also wonder how I’ll know when it’s time. I mean, you don’t always know you’re going to “lose your faculties” until they’re gone, and then what? Myself, I’m banking on an aging Baby Boomer population using their financial and political clout to make elderly euthanasia legal, and then I’ll have a really specific contract drawn up with my doctors to off me at a predetermined level of pain and suffering.
That’s why I’m planning on being a druggie once I hit 70 or so. If I’ve done everything I want to do earlier in life and I don’t really have much to live for, why not? If i’m gonna be sick and frail and old I might as well be stoned out of my mind.
As far as I’m concerned, the most important financial objective of the first 65 years of my life is to save enough money to afford around-the-clock in-home nursing care for the last 10 years.
My dad pointed out a guy in the race results the other day who was in his seventies who ran a race that was two minutes faster than the guy who won the age group below him. His time overall was around or a little over a six minute mile for an eight mile course, roughly what I was running 3.1 mile cross country courses in freakin’ high school. It’s not like he’s a lifelong athlete reaping the fruits of a lifetime of clean living, either, he took up running in his fifties to lose weight. To heck with offing myself before I’m old and decrepit, I want to be that guy.
Bedpans, heart pains, asthma,
That Guy
Joint aches, feet swell, eyes gone,
Is That Guy!
He’s a colostomy–
He’s everything that every guy will be!
Lap robes, wheelchairs, walkers,
That Guy
Oatmeal, fiber, Jell-O
Is That Guy
He’s mine alone, but unluckily for you…
When you get real elderly,
I mean real elderly,
Then you’ll be That Guy too… That Guy!