In March, 2017 it will be twenty years since my mother passed. I often wonder what she would think of us and the world if she could come back and try to pick up where she left off before she got sick, and before we all had to say goodbye to her. I have a pretty good idea that she would not be pleased with all of the changes she would encounter, in fact, I knew her well enough to believe she would be as terrified as she would be mortified.
1996 was the last year she was well enough to still be the family go to girl when any of us had a problem or if we needed comforted or only reassured that tomorrow will be a better a day; that was her signature saying when she couldn't explain or fix something for someone else right away. In October of that year she was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and the day before she received that horrible news she went shopping. That day began as any other before she realized for sure that something was wrong and from then on everything in her world (and ours) went downhill and then five months later she was gone.
She wasn't fixing to die before she was told that she might, and it wasn't until she was too weak to struggle against what was rapidly becoming inevitable and fell into a coma before her will to keep hoping and fighting to stay with us eventually gave out. I was at her bedside when she passed and the next twenty years have seemed like only a few days. But here we are; two decades since, and with the years came the changes of attitudes and behavior of most of the world in addition to technological advances that changed how we get things done, how we treat one another and of course our economy, one that she and my dad (who passed a year later) probably couldn't survive on their own if they were still here, even if both were healthy.
Nevertheless, my parents were strong people that played by the rules and they spent their lives under a different set of them than we now have for everyone; maybe it is a disguised blessing in their favor that they didn't live to see what we all do now, or that they needn't be expected to accept changes I suspect they wouldn't want if given a choice, or to even be able to comprehend. That changing economy for example; most of my mother's favorite shopping venues are gone or are closing, largely because of how the masses shop now through the convenient process of never having to leave home by doing it on line.
Mom was a window shopper who enjoyed walking past one and peering into another and seeing a reason to enter a store; she found joy in getting dressed up to leave the house whenever it was possible to go somewhere or do something different than being cooped up at home where she was busied by the daily routines of housekeeping and making sure hers was a fine oasis away from the madness and chaos of others. She would return from a day out there in it and say she was glad she didn't have to face it everyday but we all knew she enjoyed it.
Websites have replaced those windows and keyboards and computer screens asking for credit card numbers have made it easier to purchase just about everything (including food) without ever seeing it close up, trying it on to see if fits, or being tempted by an aroma. We pay on line for what we want to buy instead of handing money to cashiers and carrying it home ourselves and then wait for someone in a brown or white truck to bring it to us. Simple transactions but with possible consequences ranging from identity theft that can wipe us out financially or theft of the products from our porches when there is no one home to greet the delivery man.
Before the stores boarded up their windows and the employees that worked in them were sent home for good getting anywhere presented fewer challenges and was less expensive as well as being far less dangerous than it has become for people her age. Her commute was on city buses where she didn't mind standing at a stop waiting for one to get her away and back home again. But most of those destinations she wanted to visit are gone and those buses are no longer the safe capsules of transportation they once were. She would be reluctant to even board one today if yesterday she saw something on the news where something horrible happened. The hugely inflated fare it now requires to climb aboard or how riders now pay with debit or credit cards instead of coins dropped into a box beside the driver would leave her gasping in disbelief.
For that matter, what we pay for everything would go well beyond sticker-shock for both my parents and probably for everyone that died around the time they did. But what might shock them both more than prices for goods or services is the people that were born shortly before or after they died and how we are raising and educating them as well as the people they knew and how so many of them have changed!
The progress that has come wouldn't be viewed by them with the same zeal it is for everyone that has embraced how we get things done or the new tolerance for other people's behavior that was different from what they believed was normal.
Nearly all of the progress that was made in their lifetime and the things that were new in the 20th Century has become old-school now; all replaced with gadgets and ideas they might not understand or want, and it has taken just twenty years to all but erase that familiar world they knew. This would be a scary place to be for my mother but not for my dad. His attitude would be more in line with mine, which is a will to accept what I have to but to hold onto what I want to keep until my time is over and not allow anyone or any machine change how I manage my affairs or what I think when it is my decision to make.
My parents were never fixing to die; they treated each day as they did earlier ones until the choice was no longer theirs. I on the the hand have reasons to and they are reasons neither of them were confronted with because they lived in a time when dying was probably a sadder occurrence because for them there was more to look forward to in their normal world than some of us see in ours. In their lifetime not much was so different from a past that was interesting and when the world was more sane than it has become, and when what they accomplished in all of their years of living would still matter for the future more than what we have does for ours.
Progress is galloping past us faster than it did in their time and people's attitudes and expectations are flying off in different directions even faster! My cell phone that I have had for 15 years is a dumb phone compared to newer ones with bigger screens that are really compact computers. Nothing about my life and what I use is regarded as smart. I still do most things manually even when I could pay for smart things and my own attitudes and expectations haven't changed significantly from what they were twenty or even 30 years ago.
But a lot has changed for my generation which has become one that is more and more willing to forget the past and do its best just to find a comfortable place in the years we have left. Were I to die today and somehow find myself back here in 2037 I am sure I would drop dead again from shock when I saw the changes that are surely ahead. So I am fixing to die; not that I have any plan for that to happen soon, but even if we cannot be sure of when...we do know that death will befall us at sometime, and as morbid as it may sound I have been busying myself with being ready to the point of embracing the idea!
In my work as a writer I have shared more than just clues that I am ready to go anytime the Lord is ready for me, and if today were my last one I am fine with it. In fact, if he were to leave it to me to decide if today was the finish line or choose to hang around another twenty years this would be my day of glory! What I envision in becoming an old man portends a place I want no residency in, especially if it is a nursing home or the more polite term for a warehouse for old people (assisted living space). The idea of living longer if it means not being able to care for myself without help is something I hope I never experience.
It is a roll of the dice; be okay with checking out soon, or risk catastrophic happenings that could render us helpless, bankrupt or wishing we were dead all because we weren't ready or didn't plan for either.
Those my age who say they are excited about getting older than we are, or that they enjoy this time more than when they were younger are either easily amused, still in near perfect health, or they are lying to someone. Even if they are financially better off than most I suspect there is some truth missing from their vocabulary when they talk about how much better they think the world is now than it was before it got on the fast track to change. But if they are really honest and really think it is I hope they live another 40 years. If they do, good for them; maybe by then all of what they hope to see around them will be worth it.
But what is around me now, and what is trending and evolving is more than I want twenty more years of, so I shake off as much personal frustration as I can by staying focused on what makes me happy while keeping an eye on anything or anyone that displeases me and avoiding it when I can. I am fixing to die by living the way I choose for as long as I possibly can. That means expecting less and staying satisfied that I lived in a better time and can still do only the things I must and what my personal resources allow.
I am fixing to die by not hoping for phone calls that could change my life or waiting for my government to ever get around to caring more for more people than it has lately and by not fearing what it is likely to do or become. I am fixing to die by voting against politicians that continue to seek new ways to keep their careers going by making themselves more popular to people I have little in common with, and I am fixing to die by setting my own last few goals to manageable heights.
That means waking up every day and ignoring changes that don't suit me and shrugging off all of the warning signs of things or people that make me uncomfortable or could kill me! In other words I am preparing the best I know how to finish how I was when that day was decades still ahead. I am fixing to die by not waiting for someone else to do anything I want done and just doing it myself on my own terms.
We are turning a political corner in America with a new president that is unlike any politician I have seen and for that reason I voted for him against any expectations I had that he could possibly win the election. But he did win and although he scares a lot of people who are hoping he and the country fails under his leadership I remain optimistic that he will not only succeed in undoing what those who came before him changed for the worse or to only benefit a few, but that it will be better for more people before the smoke and noise subsides from the angry ones that only have their own interest at heart.
I hope I am right about this man, but even if it turns out that he isn't much different than the rest I'll be okay with that also because whether half of the world likes the other half or not our choices become fewer and with less hope with each new election and there isn't much anyone can do about that. I have been approaching this whole fixing to die thing with the attitude that it is inevitable if not just over the horizon for me, and after that what is left behind will be up for grabs for someone else just as it always has been.
By then it won't matter to all of us who moved on to whatever is next, and when the time arrives for me to face the consequences of living a long time no one should wonder if I was ready to die or not because if anyone has been paying even a little attention to me or what has defined me as a writer they will know that I have been fixing to for a spell.
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