today

I think I told you that I decided I have to write another, new chapter for my aging book. So I started to do some  peripheral reading to jog my anecdotal memory.  (My book is not a documentary, it's a collection of thoughts.)  Anyway, of course, and so....more thinking.

I am so arrogant, so blessed, so smug, so fortunate, so complacent, as if I had anything to do with my good genes and good health.  Yes, I try to take good care of myself, but I am not making a bid for immortality, I'm just trying to live well in whatever time ls granted to me. Anything can happen, and usually does.  Don't presume, don't assume.  

The "good death" is often attributed to  a good palliative care unit doing its job.  In the olden days a good death occurred at the bedside of the dying patriarch who asks if everyone is present and runs down the names of his family, being assured that they are all indeed, there. And he asks, "So who's minding the store?"  Another so-called good death, desired by men, is to be shot at the age of 92 by a jealous husband. A more peaceful end is envisaged by women: to die quietly on a birthday, again surrounded by the loving family.  I actually know someone who went that way, well, I didn't know her, I knew one of her sons who was present at her 97th birthday party  when she passed (as they say), surrounded, etc.  She was a living - dying - myth and all too rare.  Instead, we get the common, garden-variety, undignified , and very expensive fall into Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and other nasty failures. Who's to say who will be exempt? 

Not me.  All I can say is, "I'm still here."  

And may the Lord be thankit.  

Until tomorrow?