The Business of Dying

03/31/2005

Life, death, and all the stuff we experience in between. WOW! These past weeks have been successful in forcing one to confront his or her own mortality. Although I know one day I will die, I just don’t give that much thought to it. Rather didn’t give much thought to it. Now I realize there is a whole business of dying and I need to make sure my accounts are in order.

I have recently printed out seven pages of documents related to the end of my "so called life." These pages ask hard questions like, if something happens to me do I want to be kept alive by feeding tube, drugs, or medical devises. They are asking me to make decisions as to who is responsible for making determinations about my care if I am unable to make those choices for myself.

Someone needs to be appointed over my poor estate in the event of my dying. Now I need to figure out who gets to be the distributor of all my stuff.

There was a time I said, "hey, I’m not married, I’m poor and I could care what happens after I go." But now I see differently. I see that there are people who may try to kill each other to get some of my shit when I die – even crappy shit – gathering shit for, well, shit’s sake.

The past few weeks have brought to mind the day of my maternal grandmother’s funeral. The police had to post officers at her house while the service was taking place because people who did not attend the funeral were caught going into her house taking crap. The Executor had to get a pad lock placed in order to keep the riff-raft out. To this day, there is not a good account of which items are missing.

Recently a friend’s mother passed away. As the executor of her mother’s estate, she had to have the locks changed to the house because relatives were having a field day looting the place. There is jewelry and little knick-knacks missing. Although everyone knows who has taken things, there is nothing she can do because she does not have concrete proof to charge the thief.

The business of dying has taken up so much head space. I didn’t realize there were so many issues to think about.

I pray all my friends are also seeing to their business. I would hate for anyone else to become part of the media’s circus.

Peace,
zss

© 2005 Wrosesongs
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