Death is the new sex

Do you think about death a lot? I do. Could be the season (tomorrow is Halloween), could be the weather, could be the events happening in the country these days. My preoccupation with death could stem from all these things, but I'm guessing it comes mostly from visiting my mother every day. She just keeps on truckin'. I am impressed by the persistence of life. Human cells don't know the word retirement: cells want to keep working, even when they can no longer spell or remember what they had for lunch. They don't give up just because we, the human mind supposedly in charge of the cells, are tired of living.

Death is a relatively recent preoccupation for me. Like many people, I used to think a lot about sex. Well, love really, but let's not quibble. Getting it, giving it, getting more of it, getting it from the “right” person, or avoiding it, life was all about sex. And I suppose food and money, but food and money are just necessary ingredients to getting sex. For some, sex is about procreation; for some, it's about recreation; for some, look out for the devil's idle hands! I wasn't unique—for or against, it seems to me, many people obsess about sex.

However, if we are over a certain age, sex might seem increasingly distant and irrelevant. I don't think I'm unique in this regard either. In fact, I suggest death is the new sex. Now that I'm officially old, I think I am qualified to make this claim.

My friends who are my age or older used to discuss their relationships with me. As they learned to live their own lives, one by one, they have become single. With a few exceptions, they don't talk about relationships anymore. Now they talk about death.

“My friend was riding her bike and got run over by a garbage truck,” said a seventy-year-old friend who rides her bike a lot.

Another friend called me on the phone to tell me a story about her friend's suicide. Even though I did not know the person, I was both appalled and curious. More curious, really—I didn't care much about this person I did not know, but I was very interested to hear how he orchestrated his own demise. I wanted to pick up a few tips.

“He invited a couple friends over for the night, but made them stay in a separate room so they couldn't be held responsible,” she said.

“Couldn't he get a doctor's help?” I asked. This is Oregon, after all—Death with Dignity, 1997. We not only have the right to self-terminate, we can also get assistance.

“He wasn't dying, he was just in terrible chronic pain,” she replied. “He couldn't eat anything without excruciating pain. He endured it for six years and decided he'd had enough.”

I don't suppose it takes that much courage to choose an end to one's own endless suffering. Clearly, the guy had given life the old college try. I was impressed, though, by his careful planning. He wanted some help from close friends, but didn't want to implicate them in the event, so he sent them to spend the night in the guest room. He made sure he was lying on a lawn chair, not the bed, to avoid messing up the mattress . . . so thoughtful. Then he took three drugs—one to slow the heart, one to combat nausea, and the final, a huge dose of Seconal, which apparently does the trick. Hmmm. Where does one get a big dose of Seconal? No doubt from a doctor's prescription, like other controlled substances. Or on the black market.

I tried to picture myself scoring sedatives on the black market. Where exactly is the black market, I wondered. Probably off Hawthorne, where old hippies still lurk. Or in the Pearl. Yeah, in the Pearl. I hear those millennials over there are magicians at locating illegally obtained controlled substances.

“He wanted to watch the stars as he was dying,” my friend said wistfully. “And apparently the clouds cleared away.” I thought that was possible but unlikely, considering, you know, Oregon. We did have a stretch of great weather, though, unusual for October, so I guess it is possible. I wondered how she knew her dying friend got a glimpse of the stars . . . was someone perhaps peeking? I didn't ask her, not wanting to ruin her mood.

I've read that breathing helium is a gentle way to exit. Make a plastic tent over your head, fill it with helium from a balloon bottle, and drift away painlessly. That seems like a lot of work to me, and who will return the helium bottle to the party store after I'm gone? Plus, I'd need some friends to make sure I didn't try to exit the tent. No, too much can go wrong. My vote would be for fentanyl. Darn, I'm back to trying to find that black market. Sigh.

Well, like most Americans, I assume I have plenty of time to obsess about my demise. If I'm out of time, it won't matter. Someone else will have the tedious task of cleaning up my earthly remains. Not to mention, the clutter in the Love Shack. My apologies, in advance.

I would love to go a-wandering

Bless me, Blogbots, it's been weeks since my last post. I've been busy. I put fleastop on the cat. I went to the bank multiple times. I did piles of laundry. I ate a lot of eggs and vegetables. I got a mammogram. I watched cable news on YouTube. I drank gallons of coffee. I edited a few papers. I whined. I moaned. I complained and gnashed my pearly grays. And I visited my mother at the retirement home every day at 6:17 pm.

Every day feels new and old at the same time. How is that possible? Most of the time I don't anticipate what is coming, I just let it smack me in the face. I set an alarm on my phone to remind me of go-time: Six o'clock. I'm in the car listening to NPR by 6:07. In 10 minutes I am parking under the big tree that drops crap on my windshield, wondering how did I get here?

As I walk to the back door, I realize, whoa, here I am again. Same door, same code, same echoey click as the door shuts behind me. Same hallway of worn brown carpet, same fried meat odors lingering in the air. Same old people coming slowly toward me from the dining room, some shuffling behind big-wheeled walkers, some being pushed in wheelchairs, all with dazed expressions on their wrinkled faces. I can guess what they are thinking: Who is this girl? and What did I just eat for dinner?

“Howdy howdy,” I say as I pass Nurse Debbie who sorts and dispenses medications at a big rolling desk outside the dining room. She usually waves. Sometimes she says howdy howdy back at me. I don't know who started saying hello that way, her or me. Now I say it all the time. Ugh.

As I pass the dining room door I peer in to see if my mother is still at the table. I rarely see her there. Dinner is almost always over by 6:18. Striding down the hall, I note the framed art hanging on the dingy flowered wallpaper walls. There are prints of paintings of blurry milkmaids standing with cows or sitting on fences against pink clouds interspersed with framed mirrors hung at odd levels. Narrow tables occur at intervals, flanked by chairs, places to rest when the wallpaper is too much. Now I get why they are called occasional tables.

Mom's apartment door is always open during the day. I never know what to expect when I get there. Will she be sacked out on the couch? Will she be sitting up watching M.A.S.H. reruns on TV? Will she be in the bathroom or rummaging around in a cupboard or lying broken on the floor? See what I mean about every day being a new adventure? I don't predict what I might find. I take it as it comes.

Today wasn't much different from any other day, except Mom was anxious to get outside. She hadn't had a cigarette all day. She hustled down the hall to Jane's apartment and rapped on the door. Good thing Jane was ready, because Mom was already moving away, head down, hunched over her walker, one thing on her mind: gotta scratch that nicotine itch. Jane and I stumbled along in her wake.

Jane looked the same—crookedly drawn eyebrows, uneven eyeliner, big earrings, cut off gray sweatpants, a garish print fleece jacket, and loose house slippers. Her daughter gave her a perm last week, so now her wispy gray hair has a bit of kinky curl to it. She likes to wear it up, but sometimes she lets it go loose. All she needs is a long glittery flounced skirt and she'd make a killing telling fortunes.

Lately, Jane has seemed more paranoid than usual. Tonight she hardly had time to suck on her cigarette before she was complaining about “the kids upstairs.” Before you think, oh right, another demented old lady, there really are kids living upstairs at the retirement home. Apparently there is an apartment on the second floor that the owner rents out to a friend who has three or four kids, ranging in age from about thirteen to maybe eighteen? I can't tell, who knows. A couple boys, a couple girls of varying heights, all with some amazing hairstyles. They seem like polite children to me, but I must admit, it's weird to think that a pack of kids have free run of the retirement place. I don't think the kids are going through drawers looking for spare change and trying on adult diapers when the staff aren't looking, but I can't fault Jane for being paranoid.

I tried to think of something to say to reassure her . . . uh, que sera sera? But she was already moving on.

“Why does the moon do that?” Jane asked me, pointing to the three-quarter moon.

“Do what?”

“Sometimes we can see it, sometimes we can't.”

“Well, it has to do with the rotation of the moon around the earth and the earth around the sun,” I stammered, thinking, what the hell do I know about how the moon works.

“Oh, yeah,” Jane said. “I forgot it did that.” She seemed satisfied with my answer. Whew. I was wondering if I needed to make a mobile of the sun and the planets.

Mom meanwhile was off in la-la-land, dazed as usual halfway through her cigarette. She shrugged her shoulders when I caught her eye.

Every night we sing songs as she walks me down the long hall to the back door. Tonight I tried Blood Sweat and Tears' You Made Me So Very Happy. She didn't know that one. 

“From the 1970s,” I said.

“I was too busy raising kids,” she said. So we fell back on our old favorite, The Happy Wanderer. I looked up the lyrics. We take liberty with some of the verses.

I love to go a-wandering
Along the mountain track
And as I go, I love to sing
My knapsack on my back

Val-deri, val-dera (I sing boundaree, bounderaaaa, and Mom sings Bowseree, Bowsaraaa)
Val-deri, val-dera
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

I want to go a-wandering

Until the day I die

And as I go, I love to sing

Beneath the clear blue sky