A House in Order

I seem to be in the process of putting my house in order. And I wonder why. I’m at an age when thoughts of death aren’t unusual, and my health has so deteriorated in the past several years that those thoughts of death are reinforced. I’m in the process of selling most of my cd’s and books. The cd’s can go because I have all the music on my computer, and of the books, I’ll save my favorite authors and get rid of the rest. I’m cleaning out my closets of clothes and shoes I’ll never wear again, I’m putting together and binding all the years of my journal since 1982, getting them all ready for my kids to one day read . . . or not read. I’m finally resigned to the fact that I’ll never have any of my books published by a publishing company that would actually sell them, resigned to the fact that I’ll never hear any of my songs sung by anyone.

Putting my house in order.

I’ve even given a lot of thought to the way I’d like to die. Best would be the fatal heart attack or stroke, the immediate departure to avoid being a burden to Rosalie or any of our children. I fear cancer, especially if it’s a kind that allows me to linger in pain and financial distress. I especially fear dementia or Alzeimer’s because either would take away my remembering where I put the pills or why I was going to use them. When I know the time has come, if the quality of my life is no longer what I can accept or if I fear losing my mind and memory, then I have several ways to go. Pills would be the first way, but there’s always the danger of not knowing which pills or how many. The closed garage and combusting auto would be the second way, but that brings in the danger of killing someone else, like Rosalie, from the fumes seeping into the house. The third way, and probably the best way, is the drive into the desert on a hot summer day, then parking with windows closed and a.c. off. Yes, that would be the most rational and least messy way to do it. A gun to the head is out of the question because of the mess someone else, like Rosalie, would have to clean up. Or maybe if I could arrange it, I’d go like brother Dick went, drowning in a motel pool, a solitary, silent death by drowning. I’ve heard that drowning is a little like going to sleep.

Putting my house in order.

But enough morbidity for now. I still have much to do to finish putting this house in order.