“I’m not dead yet!” Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975
Well, that about sums it up. My friend is not dead but after having to be hauled off to the ER because of a pulse rate of 176 (yes, you read right and how is that even possible?), they pumped him up with drugs and there he lies, hoping for the best and maybe denying the worst.
My feelings are mixed and my emotions perplexed for so many reasons. I say that I don’t care but there’s a twinge lingering somewhere in my system that does. We had grown apart years ago so why am I having such a hard time distancing myself from his end of life situation?
I think it’s because of a reflection of my own, eventual demise.
I am pondering why my friend chose a cousin to be executor and power of attorney for his last wishes. A cousin that lives on the other side of the country who has no immediate desire to get shit done quickly nor come out and visit his dying relative when he’s in hospice or in the ER. I don’t get it but then again, I don’t really need to care. But I do.
Then I don’t because people make their own choices and I have nothing to do with them. The choices, I mean. The people, well, honestly, kind of.
I also live on the other side of the country from any family member who I would designate seeing my countless belongings go to the right places and who I would trust with all my passwords to change my Facebook page into a tribute page. And calling my hundreds of contacts in my cellphone to tell them the inevitable news of my passing. I mean, I’m not counting on dying anytime soon, that’s for sure, but the fact that I am living and breathing means that one day, it’s gonna happen!
Who do you decide to choose as that one person to figure your shit out when your jaw stops flapping with nonsense about who gets your motorcycles? Or books? Or voluminous collection of sex toys — sadly are mostly new and unused?
Time to get my own shit together and maybe this is the reflection that gives me peace and fear at the same time. Maybe it’s a flareup of my undiagnosed ADD that doesn’t let me get shit done when I need to. Yeah, at the beginning of COVID, I started a will, designating younger family members to get stuff but then why should I give things to them? They never call on the holidays, my birthday or anytime else during the year so why should I care to give them anything. And I don’t get texts from them either, because, well, that’s how people communicate these days.
I guess I feel obligated to leave them things and make my decisions because they’re family and designating a family member is what my friend is doing at the end stage of his life. Maybe now I get it.
But then again, who’s gonna go through all my stuff? That’s the friend I was trying to be for him yet I feel there is a wall I can’t push through and it’s called his cousin. His cousin on the other side of the country who doesn’t listen to my urgent pleas to sell the Las Vegas condo while my friend is still alive. Or come out and see him and talk about his wishes while he has a clear mind unadulterated by morphine or other brain-fogging drugs.
But his stuff is not mine and I have to keep reminding myself about my internal wake-up call of getting my own end of life shit together because you never know when death is gonna happen.
I better stop writing now and crack out that Last Will and Testament I need to finish. And get that Durable Power of Attorney form filled out. And make copies and send them to the right people and tell my friends that it’s time to do theirs as well but no one wants to talk about death until it’s too late.
Time for me to figure out what I’m gonna do with all my shit. So thanks to my friend for helping me get my own shit together while I helped you with yours.
Godspeed.