Thoughts on ageing and death

I've been thinking about Auntie Flo, an octogenarian from the Farm Manager's side who has resided in a nursing home in Toronto for at least the last ten years. 

Cultures with a more humane approach to their elders would have set Auntie Flo adrift on an ice floe long before now. A few favoured keepsakes and a flask of vodka, and off you go! 

Actually, settlers from Finland introduced vodka to the scenario, but even the locals thought that a positive development.

In our allegedly more advanced and progressive culture, we keep our elders technically alive as long as the resources are in place to pay for it. Where the money comes from doesn't matter as long as it keeps coming. In our public nursing homes, it comes from the tax base. Otherwise, it comes from insurance policies or family wealth. The main point is, even if grandpa's quality of life has been sub-zero for the last fifteen years, we won't let him go till we exhausted his finances, whereupon he is permitted a "natural" death, even though he was last able to correctly identify any family member in about '95 or so.

When I first met Aunt Flo she was a loud and proud Jewish broad who never failed to express her opinion, whether you wanted to hear it or not. She hasn't had an opinion, let alone expressed it, for at least ten years. But her mechanicals are sturdy as a horse and could well continue breathing air and pumping blood for another twenty.

Or as long as the money lasts. Frankly, the Flo I once knew would prefer the ice floe.

On my side, a brilliant uncle, a university professor and highly regarded historian, disappeared into the mists of dementia while still in his sixties. Last time I saw him alive, this brilliant man, with whom I was privileged to have shared many hundreds of hours of conversation, was babbling to his teddy bear. I think he would have preferred the ice floe too.

In my youth I had a rather dissolute lifestyle for a spell. My Doctor, EJ Crispin, told me I wouldn't see 30 unless I mended my ways, big time.

So I moderated my ways, at least somewhat, and, were EJ still among us, I would happily send him a progress report.

But you never want to gloat. I still see the number "30" in my dreams, but now I'm not sure if it means I have another 30 years or another 30 seconds.

They say Ernest Hemmingway tried to kill himself by downing a quart of Bourbon every day for the last 25 years of his life, but still needed a shotgun to finish the job.

I remember seeing Kurt Vonnegut on a talk show at 85 years old, smoking a cigarette and threatening to sue the cigarette companies, because they had promised smoking would kill him.

That's not where I'm at. I love life, and life is good! And I hope it remains so for at least another thirty years...

But in the event that things take a turn, I want all concerned to know for sure, and I think most of them already do, that I choose the ice floe over twenty years of senility and asset stripping.