LIFE AND DEATH

AND SOYLENT GREEN

Whoa!!! That's a heavy subject. Are you really going to write about that you may be asking yourself?

Yes. I am.

If you are a baby boomer like I am then your mom and dad are in their 80's or 90's. But some of you
at this point in your life have already had the big boom laid on your heart and watched your precious mom and/or dad go on before you to the land where there is no more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears. That's a good thing, right? That they are in a better place . . . without you?

I feel extremely fortunate that I still have my mother and father, both who are 91 years old and counting. My Dad wants to live to be 100. (And he did.) He has the genes. His family lives long and prospers. I am praying I have those genes and the good health that goes with it, bypassing any heart problems in the bloodline. Excuse my pun!

But my mother didn't fair as well. She has struggled through two triple bypasses and recovered famously. Then she found out she has old-age diabetes like her mother had (here again I pray that passed me by while swimming in the gene pool) and has to prick her beautiful, thin-skinned fingers three or more times a day. The first time she did it, I was with her and jumped when she jumped when that little needle came out of nowhere when she pressed the button and poof! . . .  there was that little bead of blood that would tell her if she was traveling up or down on the sugar road of life. It's no big thing now.

Lately, she hasn't felt so good. We tease about Soylent Green, and I tell her that if there was a Soylent Green factory around I would take her there when she was ready, and we would get her laid out on the table where Edward G. Robinson had lain and pick out the scene she would want to see playing on the big screen surrounding her bed and pick out the music she would like to hear. We'd say what we needed to say, and she would close her eyes, take her last breath and go on, leaving all her aches and pains behind. She could go with dignity and with your mind.

But there isn't any Soylent Green factory around so she has to go through the drudgery of these last days, and I have to see her do it. That's what you get with modern medicine. We are all living longer than our bodies wanted to live and are glad of the extra time to make memories but the end is still there for one to go through. We don't get a “Get out of Jail” card.

I hope that all of you out there reading this blog can send a prayer up for my precious mother and father that they may be able to get through this . . .  what words can I write? It's awful to have to let someone you love go when you know you won't see them again any time soon.

That's what hope is for . . .  hope for the day when we all get together in a place where all our sorrows are no more, tears are no more and we are with our loved ones forever.

© nancy 3.19.2010