Rusty's Armory

Meeting Thanatos Head-On

Posted on January 23, 2022

This has been a long week of sober assessments and reflections for me.  I am not in any acute danger of dying at this point, but my life has been put on a shortened leash.  Oddly, I am glad the uproar is over, and I can begin preparations for this stage of life.  I really don’t want to sound morbid, and while this recent spate of setbacks has sobered me a great deal, it is as much a stage of life that needs to be met head on as all the other challenges I faced or ran from in life.  I will come down extremely hard on the medical practitioner who tries to “protect” me from bad news.  I can tell positive thinking from fact, and I resent being treated as a child.  If my chances are slim to none, I want to know.  I refuse to let Thanatos blindside me.  I will look him in the eye as he swings his scythe.

But it isn’t with heroics that I’ll meet this challenge.  I will meet it by rising out of my bed each morning, walking into the kitchen, getting those first sips of coffee in me, taking my vitals, eating something simple such as toast or cereal and then taking my meds.  Snooks and I sit quietly with each other for a fleeting moment, and we talk. We have never been chatty with each other.  Sometimes it is soft morning talk and sometimes it is laced with true feeling. I do not wish to leave her unprepared, but I have so many loose ends to tie up.  I am thinking of issuing instructions to my medical people that it is time for palliative care and not therapeutic care.  If something will enable to live at comfort, breathe easier or maintain my strength, that is fine.  But if it is merely to extend my life beyond its time, it needs go away.

So, my morning coffee posts will be more of the end-of-life chronicles rather than kicking politicians and journalists to the curb though I am sure that I’ll squeeze them in somewhere.  They are in the words of the military, a target rich environment.  I am going to drag Mz Muse out of retirement once again to talk about this.  Sometimes I need an acerbic wit as a foil to my melodrama.  Mz Muse hates melodrama and poorly executed hyperbole.  But I think it will also be our last goodbye.  Three novels sit in obscure file folders on my PC, and now I know they will never be opened again.  So I no longer need someone to build a fire under my butt to write.  Who knows?  Perhaps I’ll even say something nice to her, though I am sure she will wait for the punchline.  It will be a bittersweet goodbye.  I will in fact miss her. We had a long run.

So the winters day flits by.  Piles of construction debris and material await moving to the burn pile or put on sleepers.  The fence will not be repaired, one set of steps wont be getting fixed.  I want to mow before the spring greenery starts to grow so that the Bermudagrass has a better chance of growing … I can still ride a mower.  Yeah.  I am not going to lay down and die either.