November 13, 2024
My 94-year-old neighbor, Neal, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage yesterday. He’s been moved to hospice and per his son, isn’t expected to last more than “a few hours to a few days.” He’s as good as gone, and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
*****
I suppose this strikes me especially hard because he’s nearly the same age as my mother, a year younger in fact. It’s a bald reminder that I never know when the last thing I said to her is going to be the last thing I say to her.
Our small neighborhood has aged even since I moved here, 24 years ago. The high school kids are now 40-something, their parents are in their 70s and 80s, and the longest-term homeowners like Neal are winnowing out year by year.
There’s no big surprise to any of this. It’s how it works. But what if it isn’t how it’s supposed to work? Did any of the elderly neighbors who passed have soul-level plans to stick around? Did “aging” and “disease” within the false matrix claim them before med beds and age reversal arrived?
*****
Such enormous shifting is happening, such churning of timescapes and realities, beliefs and “sure things” have become as tentative as melting frost, puddling into water and vaporized by the sun. I sometimes wonder if there’s any point in anyone planning anything.
The old adage “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans” usually makes me smile. I wonder what Neal’s plans were. I wonder what my mother has planned. Is her soul readying to reel her home, wherever and whatever that might be? Does she want to star travel—in real life, in real body—but now won’t? Is there a brain event lurking in her future, a relatively painless (I say, ignorantly) way to shuffle off the ol’ mortal coil?
I’ll do my best to keep uppermost in mind that my last words to her may become my last words to her. That’s the best prodding toward kindness, not just toward her but toward all, that I could imagine.
