Marcus Aurelius Just Wanted His Pudding

Welcome to Morningwood retirement and assisted living. You'll love it here! There is so much to do and the food is great. We'll entertain you, exercise you, feed you, and look after all your needs. Live out your twilight years free of the mental anguish wrought by burdening your children. Your final years of existence will bother no one. Now eat your Jello and take your special pills so the orderlies can go out for a smoke.

Why do we do this to people?

I don't understand this pervasive assumption that old people just want a comfortable place that's out of the way so they can die. I get people that need medical assistance just to eat and breathe, but it is more often the Moirai of people that are fully capable of looking after themselves and pursuing whatever avocation suits their ancient fancy. Instead of enjoying what should be the most rewarding epoch of life, they get stuck in a hamster cage and given a wheel to keep them busy and diverted until they croak; a perdition of sorts aimed at dissolving their dignity as they are transformed from something sentient into something farmed.

Bullocks to that! Are you kidding me!?

First and foremost: To the adult children of these poor souls, whose lives are what they are by the hands of those they wish to put in the back of the pantry—You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You owe. Period. Those people suffered for 18-46 years (online game addiction dependent) to set you up to become the ultra success that you are. They wiped your butt, sacrificed their dreams, suffered through your refrigerator posted 3rd grade poems, and (by the strength of Krom) resisted many urges to eviscerate costumed characters at themed pizza places. Everything you are and everything you'll ever be or accomplish is owed to these people. How are you paying them back? You're putting them out of your misery. And, you know, the only reason they agree to do it; smile and pretend to be happy about it, is that they don't want to be a burden—once again, allowing your interests to supplant their own.

If my kids ever put me in a home while I still have the means to harm them, they better watch their backs. I will abscond, ford the river, kill an alligator with my false teeth, break into their homes with my walker, and crap in their cereal bowls. (That's pretty crass, but old dudes are like that, I think) The sunset of my life will be consumed by the desires (and sometimes the avarice) of my entertainment, travels, and adventures. If I require assistance, I will seek it. If I can't climb to the top of the Zugspitze, I'll spend a little more of that dwindling inheritance on a helicopter.

So, to my girls: Once we, your parents, have seen all we can see and are barren of money—and believe me, we will be out of money—we are coming to live with you. There will be nothing left to pass on. We will have long since sold the house to buy legal marijuana for the glaucoma I guarantee you I will have. The life insurance policy will have been cashed out so we could host numerous parties out of our beach condo. The rest we will spend on travel, booze, and Viagra.

We changed your diapers on the way in. You're changing ours on the way out.

© Raymond Smith- 2010