A Friday Night in 2012
It’s not very often that serious discussions occur during our Friday Night gatherings. Usually, the conversation flows lightly from topic to topic – what we’ve all been doing since we last saw one another or what’s new on the Peninsula, or perhaps a particular restaurant or movie recommendation. But last night, during a little lull, our friend Diane announced, “I want to talk about death.” There were eight of us here at that point and, after a brief pause to process the request, one of us asked, “Is there a reason?”
As it turned out, Diane’s brother had recently died after a four-week stay in a hospice facility near his home in Michigan. He was in his late eighties, had been in poor health for a while and, though he had no immediate life-threatening condition, he felt it was time. Diane said he spent a wonderful month visiting with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and then “just slipped away.”
A Friday Night in 2008
Everyone in the room (except maybe Hal and Nyel who usually defer to us wives) had a story or observation about an elderly friend or relative who had died in similar circumstances – not all as happily, perhaps, but more-or-less by choice. As you might imagine with a group of people of a certain age, the conversation quickly segued to our own thoughts and feelings about death – mostly about what we were doing now to prepare for the inevitable. Like our attempts at downsizing and our desires to leave as few headaches for our children to deal with as possible. And, always the biggee, whether our children were interested in participating in that particular discussion about the future.
A Friday Night in 2009
In many ways, it was a reassuring conversation. Not exactly along the lines of ‘misery loves company’… but close. None of the thoughts or ideas were new to any of us. What was new was having an open discussion about the similarity of our concerns with our friends and neighbors. And, somehow, it was reassuring – almost in ‘the elephant in the room’ sort of way.
Well… maybe you had to have been there.
When you live in a retirement center, death and dying is always a neighbor.
After spending the summer looking for high school classmates and findibg 29 or 30 dead, my own mortality has been much on my mind of late in terms of leaving few headaches for my boys. Then having the wife of a long-time friend pass suddenly, made me redouble my efforts to put my affairs in order.