Death, dying, and the Hutchinson River Parkway.
As a preface: For those who know my trade, no one that I am aware of died on the Hutch tonight.
From the time I was a little kid, I did a fair amount of driving (or riding in the car as others drove) on the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx, Westchester, and as the Merritt Parkway, in Connecticut. Since my great uncle and aunt moved away from their home in Greenwich, CT, I haven't had much cause to drive the road much until the past few years when my cousins moved to Long Island, and a decent route from my Upstate home is to take the Thruway to the Cross-Westchester to the Hutch to the Whitestone and thence eastward.
Today I was on the road to visit my grandmother who has just moved to Little Neck, on the Queens / Nassau line. On my way home, I spied a sign reading, "Parkway and River named for Anne Hutchinson 1591-1643" This site provides some details. Since Earlham has one of the infamous Mary Dyer statues, I suppose I should have been more up on this, but I wasn't.
My grandmother is on her way out. She wishes she were out, which I both understand, and find upsetting in the utmost. This is the woman who always took life by the balls and bent it to her will. She took my grandfather and father, both brilliant and yet well, ummm, spacey kind of guys, kinda like me (fancy that), smacked them around some and set them straight. She is telling me, her grandchild, to his face, that she wants to die. Let me tell you, the seven-year-old me that resides in side my mind is shitting bricks right now. Big, Cincinatti-sized bricks.
At its base though, I get it. I've lost both my grandfathers. I watched them both degenerate with age and die. That's how it works. I sort of third-person witnessed my 3 of 4 grandparents-in-law go as well. I can understand gracefully accepting mortality, but not actively desiring it.
The thing that's more painful than watching a dying woman in pain, is watching her children, my father and aunt, unable to fully contend with it. I didn't get to really experience in full adulthood my grandfathers' deaths. I was 14 when my mother's father died, and when my father's father died, I was in the process of becoming a father myself, and I was, to say the least, distracted from the plight of the living, let alone the dying.
To think, in 20, give or take, short years, this will be my and jillbles position.
In 50 or so years this will be my children's position. I hope I'm a better sport, though knowing myself, I'll probably be a miserable old fool with Eccentica Gallumbits smacking me into shape so that I at least die with some dignity.
But the questions...
The simple, Earthly questions. Whom do you trust to administer medicines in a social / assisted living services environment where the personnel is clearly overtaxed and undertrained, even when you're paying a lot of money for it? What do you do when the food tastes like crap at your nursing home?
Particularly if there's a great Kosher Deli across the street?
But your taste buds don't work so good anymore?
This probably all falls under TMI. Though, unusually for TMI on my part, it has nothing to do with sex or sexual practices.
I suppose I could explain how I and my best friends from high school worked out the best personnel combinations for orgies based on the Lego principles of available orifices.
But I won't.
From the time I was a little kid, I did a fair amount of driving (or riding in the car as others drove) on the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx, Westchester, and as the Merritt Parkway, in Connecticut. Since my great uncle and aunt moved away from their home in Greenwich, CT, I haven't had much cause to drive the road much until the past few years when my cousins moved to Long Island, and a decent route from my Upstate home is to take the Thruway to the Cross-Westchester to the Hutch to the Whitestone and thence eastward.
Today I was on the road to visit my grandmother who has just moved to Little Neck, on the Queens / Nassau line. On my way home, I spied a sign reading, "Parkway and River named for Anne Hutchinson 1591-1643" This site provides some details. Since Earlham has one of the infamous Mary Dyer statues, I suppose I should have been more up on this, but I wasn't.
My grandmother is on her way out. She wishes she were out, which I both understand, and find upsetting in the utmost. This is the woman who always took life by the balls and bent it to her will. She took my grandfather and father, both brilliant and yet well, ummm, spacey kind of guys, kinda like me (fancy that), smacked them around some and set them straight. She is telling me, her grandchild, to his face, that she wants to die. Let me tell you, the seven-year-old me that resides in side my mind is shitting bricks right now. Big, Cincinatti-sized bricks.
At its base though, I get it. I've lost both my grandfathers. I watched them both degenerate with age and die. That's how it works. I sort of third-person witnessed my 3 of 4 grandparents-in-law go as well. I can understand gracefully accepting mortality, but not actively desiring it.
The thing that's more painful than watching a dying woman in pain, is watching her children, my father and aunt, unable to fully contend with it. I didn't get to really experience in full adulthood my grandfathers' deaths. I was 14 when my mother's father died, and when my father's father died, I was in the process of becoming a father myself, and I was, to say the least, distracted from the plight of the living, let alone the dying.
To think, in 20, give or take, short years, this will be my and jillbles position.
In 50 or so years this will be my children's position. I hope I'm a better sport, though knowing myself, I'll probably be a miserable old fool with Eccentica Gallumbits smacking me into shape so that I at least die with some dignity.
But the questions...
The simple, Earthly questions. Whom do you trust to administer medicines in a social / assisted living services environment where the personnel is clearly overtaxed and undertrained, even when you're paying a lot of money for it? What do you do when the food tastes like crap at your nursing home?
Particularly if there's a great Kosher Deli across the street?
But your taste buds don't work so good anymore?
This probably all falls under TMI. Though, unusually for TMI on my part, it has nothing to do with sex or sexual practices.
I suppose I could explain how I and my best friends from high school worked out the best personnel combinations for orgies based on the Lego principles of available orifices.
But I won't.