Money - Can't Take It With You

My grandmother just became a complete ward of the State of Massachusetts.

Grandpa died 20 years ago. She lived on her own; then at a subsidized home; then at an assisted-living facility until recently when her money ran out.

She had - I believe - 300k after selling her house not long ago. But the monthlies on her care ultimately devoured all that cash.

So now taxpayers are footing the bill, er bills, but at a lesser place than she had been at.

When my father told me how this all worked (you have whittle your accounts down to zero to gain eligibility) I was a little surprised - but only because I was completely ignorant about typical end-of-life living.

It's all really sad. My grandmother doesn't recognize anyone and has all the usual maladies of a nonagenarian. She's not just dying alone, she'll have been living alone for many, many years before leaving this world.

I mean, is this what we all have to look forward too?

She is/was a very difficult woman and there was *no chance* that she was going to live with my father or his brother. Old folk, even if moderately healthy, do need around-the-clock care - even just for incontinence and whatnot. My father said he could have conceivably taken care of (butt wipe) his father but not his mother.

But still, theoretically my grandmother could have moved-in with my parents (or uncle)....they could have hired nurses to stop by here and there....much of that money would not have gone to waste....AND taxpayers could have been spared.

Obviously if they didn't have this *welfare* state those people that can afford their own end-of-life care would pay for it themselves - and the money would be spent a whole lot more efficiently. People would simply figure it out, as they did for thousands of years before the tyranny of Big Government entitlements.

And dotage might not be so lonely...

Really...Who LOVES Their Dentist???

Did any of y'all know that dentists supposedly have a very high *suicide rate*?

I mean I knew that postal employees had a high homicide rate; I knew that those fat vegans have the highest herbicide rates...but I had no idea that dentists turn their savagery inward (as well).

Here, you can Google it.

Very interesting...

Longevity Incarnate!

My grandfather, pictured above with two of his great-granddaughters....turned 97.0 years old today!

He's still fully aware, still cooking for himself, shops, bowls, and still very much enjoys food.

Recently he raved to me about a $5 lobster roll at his local supermarket. One might think it was manna from heave they way he described it!

Although the old man is indeed tired, very tired.

Killed By Long Island?

My wife and I are the same age and so each of us have friends bunched around that 36 year old band.

EXCEPT, she has a ton of friends and acquaintances (our age) who've lost a parent; a couple have even lost BOTH their parents already.

In fact, my poor wife lost her own father to pancreatic cancer when she was 15.

Meanwhile, in my circle of 36 year old friends and acquaintances....until early this year when a friend lost his father, I didn't know a single peer who had suffered this type of premature tragedy.

What could possibly explain this actuarial diversion?

Well, it does seem like New Yorkers marry and procreate later - so Mrs. C-Nut's friends' parents are a bit older.

But I think beyond that, and my wife agrees with me, that New Yorkers are a whole lot less *healthy* overall; they work more, smoke more, drink more, and eat more than the rest of the country. There's also more crime and more auto-related deaths. (My wife has THREE high school classmates that were killed on bicycles, by cars. And at least a couple of the *parent* deaths were also on the roadways.)

As my wife succinctly put it, "...because that's what Long Island does, it KILLS people!"

The Dying Room

Look at those zombies...only a total Moron would dare call this quality family time.

I submit, that in this day and age when anyone who goes for a neighborhood walk/run at night sees a flickering color TV light in EVERY home,....I submit that the living room should henceforth be known at the *dying room*.

You know in my past abode, in 2.75 years there, while not precisely true, I feel like I spent hardly a minute in my living room. I was always either in my bed, in the kitchen, in the backyard, or at my desk.

I've almost come to loathe living rooms for the corrosive passivity they stand for.

Most people have an idea that the boob tube (the boob plasma now?) fries the brain, but few realize the full extent.

Furthermore, religious channel surfing absolutely destroys the body. I'm no doctor, which bolsters my credentials(!), but I swear that sitting on a couch is one of the worst, most insidious attacks on the physical body out there. TV watching rots the core - abs and back, prevents someone from otherwise being ambulatory, AND, for whatever reason (commercials?), induces people to pig out on food. When I do watch television, e.g. the US Open this weekend, I lay on the floor, without a pillow, in a semi-crunch position. Try it from now on and you'll feel your stomach tightening!

And even in those ultra-rare instances when the TV is off...

What are people doing in their living/family rooms?

They might be sitting around, munching and sipping, nodding at the musing of their like-minded acquaintances....or exchanging vapid small-talk with those whom they are either afraid of offending or getting offended by.

Of course it's important to have friends, entertain, and celebrate wage-slave/religious holidays as a family...

But it's also important to at all times be engaged in NOVEL and PRODUCTIVE activities.

And by novel I don't mean the latest dancing reality TV show or today's Red Sox or Yankees game!

TV is a narcotic and a prison cell all at once. Heal thyself and break free!

I say steer clear of these misnamed living rooms - as recovering alcoholics would scamper past bars.

Battered Men's Shelter

We're at that age now, 35+, where our parents are getting old (drooling, napping, forgetting, cluttering, ailing, etc.) and essentially need help.

In fact, the C-Nut family is moving to Long Island; we're moving in with my beloved MIL sometime soon. There'll be much more on that development later. Essentially, I'm trading one crazed landlord for another!

But again, this is the age we are at. I was talking to a friend yesterday who just lost his FIL. There was genuine concern for his recently widowed MIL - how she'd get on, would she be lonely, etc.

My buddy told me they invited her to come down to live with them. His only lament was that she had a *dog* as well.

Mind you, this overly-hospitable friend of mine already has his SIL *living* on the premises as well.

CaptiousNut - Ouch....and now your MIL AND a dog? That's rough. You don't even have a yard. The dog is pushing it.

Buddy - The things I do for $ex once a month...

Ha!

I laughed all night long thinking of that line - almost more tragic than any above it on this post!

Gladiators Die Young

Yet another ex-NFL player dies *young*...

Every time I hear news like this I am reminded of what my therapist (physical!) in Brooklyn told me some 6 years ago.

He said that these pro athletes, most especially American football players, that their *insides* are a mess. He said they down so many anti-inflammatories throughout their career - to speed back from injury - that it all but guarantees an early death.

What a shame....because most of them leave large broods behind!

May the echoes of the Coliseum warm their buried bones...

No More Tears

Michelle Malkin writes:

Sufficient time has passed since John Murtha’s death to reckon with his true record. No tears for the wreckage, poison, and damage to the public trust he left behind.

Whoa!!! Those are some harsh, unsympathetic words! To spit on a man's grave...

Hold up there a minute.

Isn't this the same Michelle Malkin who lectured everyone not to cheer the windfall of Ted Kennedy's cancer diagnosis?

Recall what she sanctimoniously said, about 1.5 years ago:

Put aside your political differences and join me in keeping Sen. Ted Kennedy and his family in your prayers as they grapple with the news of his malignant brain tumor diagnosis.

So, has she seen the error of her ways? Has she coarsened over time?

Or does she just hold John Murtha in, well, a much, much lower regard?

I read her post (first link), and not being too acquainted with Murtha, I have to say, he sounded like a complete scumbag.

But still, he couldn't have been worse than Kennedy!

See - Holier Than Thou - Marginalizing Extreme Moderates - for Michelle's spotty schadenfreude record.

I was trying to find some fitting music on YouTube for this post, but all I could come up was this cacophony!

Oops....found another candidate - Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam - All Cried Out!!

Coddling Criminals

Someone my wife knows also had a death in their family last week.

But this woman, she and her husband DID NOT take their 6 year-old son to the wake, funeral, or burial of his grandmother.

I asked, and it was confirmed, that the child knew his grandmother well and she was geographically close.

This couple just thought it would be too emotional or too dramatic for their son to see his grandmother in a coffin - I guess.

My wife was trying figure out why they might have done this, what the possible justification could be.....when I stopped her in her tracks. This coddling was beyond ridiculous; I didn't want to hear it.

It's bad enough that Morons spoil their kids, don't teach them to work, etc.

BUT sheltering a child from the REALITY of life and death???

Eulogy Advice

So I was hunkered down working on my grandmother's eulogy late last week. Only a Moron would not utilize the internet for help as there's a wealth of resources available.

I found one website - click here - that was actually a forum. People wrote in saying things like, "Hi, my uncle just died....he was a carpenter and liked to fart....can you help me with his eulogy?"

And some chick there, "Amy", would thoughtfully respond and offer up the *perfect* poem for the eulogy. Either she was getting paid or is just the nicest person in the world because she must have answered 50 different people on that site.

Anyway, I came across a poem there that was, well, suitable for most funerals, but especially *perfect* for my grandmother. Here it is, The Ship by Bishop Brent:

A ship sails and I stand watching till she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says She is gone.

Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large now as when I last saw her. Her diminished size and total loss from my sight is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says she is gone there are others who are watching her coming over their horizon and other voices take up a glad shout. There she comes!

That is what dying is. An horizon and just the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further.

I figured I'd use it to close my grandmother's eulogy, and there it sat, at the bottom of my fourth page.

Now, this was a Catholic funeral replete with a full mass. The priest actually gave a beautiful homily(sermon) but as he was wrapping it up, he mentioned that there is a great consolatory poem to help us understand death.

My heart slowed down a bit.

He said it was a about a ship.

Uh, oh. My breath bated....

And it was, "...written by a Bishop."

I seriously wanted to stand up and give him the cut-off sign, but refrained.

Then I had to listen to him read the entire poem that I was depending on.



The worst part was that for the next fifteen torturesome minutes, between my throbbing back, sweating my balls off, and trying to harness my two disruptive brats, that I had to re-figure out how to end my speech.

The whole point of writing it out beforehand is that one can defeat the nerves and emotions and just robotically deliver it. Now, I was a bit flummoxed.

Anyway, everything worked out. The priest mis-remembered and mis-cited the poem a bit; I made a joke of it; and delivered the accurate (I think) version anyway. Plus, I had plenty of other material and really could have omitted it altogether.

I thought it was sufficiently hard to compose my speech as it was. I certainly didn't plan on having a back-up poem - which is what my advice would be to anyone else confronted with this task. A speaker simply never knows what's going to be said right before they get the microphone.

In fact, this happened to me back in 9th grade. We were doing oral presentations in history class and some kid in front of me overstepped his subject and said everything I was about to. [I reckon it was about Cortes and the Aztecs.]

And, I was at a wedding some five years ago where the maid-of-honor (English major at Brown) got up first and gave such an unbelievable *toast*, that the best man, a total meathead who was sitting right next to me, cancelled his entire speech because it would have, well, most likely seem a joke in comparison. [They are happily divorced now.]

Getting back to eulogies - I think if one is short on material or happy memories, a poem is good *filler*. I actually had the opposite problem with my grandmother. There was way too much material, so much so that my main problem was cutting it down and tying it together.

There's another poem out there that everyone's using, it's called The Dash. It's a little trite, but still quite usable.

Sunsets

I captured that sunset leaving Sag Harbor Sunday night.

This evening I drove by that spot again, only it was overcast, and we were rushing to make the Orient Point ferry. Our trip to Southampton got shortened by a couple of days by the passing of my dear grandmother. She was in her ninth decade and had lived the fullest of lives when her time came.

As her most favoritest of all the grandkids, great grandkids, and great-great grandkid (only 1) I volunteered, and was quickly drafted, to deliver the eulogy. So obviously I'll be busy for the next couple of days.

At age 34, in my ethnicity, it was getting pretty darn incredible to still have had three living grandparents. So I've been more than blessed in that regard. Heck, this will only be the fourth funeral of my sheltered life.

Organic Death - The Way To Go

The Brazilian wandering spider will kill you in 25 minutes - especially in Tulsa, Oklahoma where the antidote might not be found on the shelves of local apothecaries.

Here's the story.

Now my paternal grandfather passed, jeez, 18 years ago now. He had a heart attack while mowing his lawn.

The consensus sympathy was that...that was the way to go. It's far better to die while active and doing stuff rather than to croak after a long rotting tenure at Last Lap Living.

That perspective definitely has merit - and I used to be in full agreement.

Though now, I'm wondering if there's perhaps not a better way to bid adieu to this cruel world....

Oddly, the Brazilian spider delivers more than a painful bite that sends most victims to the hospital. Researchers have found its venom also stimulates an hours-long erection in men.

Patients not only experience overall pain and an increase in blood pressure, they also get an uncomfortable erection.

In Brazil, emergency room staff can immediately spot the victims of a bite.

"The erection is a side effect that everybody who gets stung by this spider will experience along with the pain and discomfort," said study team member Romulo Leite of the Medical College of Georgia, presumably speaking only about male bite victims.

No pain (and discomfort)....no gain, right?

After learning this, why would anyone ever hang themself?