Bad Lottery

My sisters and I share an exquisitely black sense of humor, especially when it comes to issues of death and dying.

We inherited it from my Dad. When he moved into his condo in Delray, and heard an ambulance pass, he'd exclaim "New unit for sale!" It was his way of dealing with the intimation of his own mortality, of course, a whistling past the graveyard.

He died in my arms, while my mother watched pathetically. He was my closest friend as well as my father, and the fact that I had to deal with that event taught me, 4 days before I turned 21, a crucial lesson: life's not fair. It SHOULDN'T have been that way! His death should have come at least 20 years later, after he met my wife and children, and imparted his love and wisdom upon them, and his death should have been dignified, in a bed surrounded by loving family, instead of in some random barber's chair in a strip mall in Delray...

So maybe my mother will be luckier. We always joke that she is one of the luckiest folks we know, and maybe she'll have a nicer death.

My sister and I use our black humor each time we open her condo door for our alternating weekly visits. Will Trudy or I find her gone? Which one of us will "win" the ghoulish lottery?

Mom's caregiver Louise visits her three times per week, so mathematically it should be her find...or, Sunny could follow the sadder path, and require a hospital or nursing home, where the end will come.

I discussed this with my friend Mike the other day. His beloved father Ed, one of my life's mentors, also died too young, in his 60s. His Mom fought and eventually lost to lung cancer in her early 80s. Mike's take: "Your mother might outilve YOU!"

He's right, of course. Though that would truly be unfair.