I tried not to write about this. I kept starting and stopping and skirting the issue. But Events have conspired against me and now I want to just get it over with.
My dear father died last November. Quickly (thankfully), but not suddenly (thankfully). My mother-in-law, almost twice as old as I am, just died on the Fourth of July. Slowly-too slowly, if you ask me (or her, for that matter)-but not in pain. My cousin has declined dialysis and is winding down. I was about 11 when she took me to Little Sister weekend at Kent State University in 1971, and now, treating me like a big girl again, she wants me to say a few words at her funeral. Age 60 seems young to me, especially compared to 79 and 97, but she's lived a good, full life.
Time magazine's recent cover story "How to Die" stared me down, flanked by The Last Word column at the back of my favorite magazine, The Week, titled "The Ending No One Wants," which quotes Philip Roth's Everyman: "Old age isn't a battle. It's a massacre."
I give up, I'm surrounded. So here goes.
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