I'm in the autumn of my life and my next birthday is less than a month away. I'm less interested in celebrating such an occasion for the typical reason. However, birthdays are getting to seem more ominous for reasons other than the passage of time and the inevitability of death.
I'm generally optimistic and it's not death that concerns me much. Death is a natural part of the life cycle. I'm not afraid of it. We pass on and, for all we know, to perhaps another world. No, it's living well into my old age that concerns me much more.
I'm just a drop in the great sea of millions upon millions of people who will likely lack income and protection in their senior years and be forced to scratch and scrape just in order to survive so that death can take them on its own terms one day. The range of possible scenarios of such a pitiful future existence a horrible prospect. I don't like to imagine the grim and dull grind of eking out a survival method just for the sake of biding my time until death occurs. My periods of unemployment has been discouraging and boring enough.
Though I'm single and without children, I've plenty of friends, so fear of loneliness does not bother me. I'm confident that, at whatever stage and wherever I'm at when the moment comes, some caring person will be around.
Of course, I'm already watching an expanding parade of friends, colleagues and acquaintances passing on. It's bad enough to have to consider the prospect of having to be a witness to countless passings that wear one down into a morbid occupation of constantly checking the obits, attending memorials and discussing the dead.
Having already observed many in my life pass on, I'm aware of the range of circumstances that passing on occurs. Sometimes, they're alone but have some sort of friend to help see them off and manage the affairs. Sometimes, there is a partner, though mostly it's the men who have the benefit of a female spouse or lover to help prepare, remember and grieve. Some individuals are well known community members and their communities organize ceremonies, even festivities, to remember and celebrate their contributions to society and notoriety. Usually, there are surviving family members around who have stood by the death beds and comforted them. Still, such individuals are bound to have a higher incidence of disgruntled and unloving acquaintances, I suppose. The presence of the authorities, or at least their shadows, must be acknowledged and feared, as well, I guess, which is one scary aspect of the prospect of death.
If you're worried about in whose hands the management of your death end up in, and the competency and motives of those hands, the best preventive measure is a will. I drew up a will for the first time just a few months ago. It felt good to have done it, though I've been thinking of amending it since then. No matter, for that can be easily done. In fact, making a rudimentary will in the first place is pretty easy these days, since kind lawyers provide internet services for free or at discounts, these days, and many governments allow and recognize self-made wills. Really, all you have to do is make a note and have two reliable witnesses sign it. It's a relief to get it done because there are legal guidelines as to how an estate must be handled, and you can at least express your wishes. Yes, the law allows flexibility, and the subject of the will should too, as their may be obstacles or restraints as to how well and who may be able to carry out your wishes.
Now, money is an issue. One should have enough life insurance to at least cover basic death expenses. I, for one, favour cremation, which cuts down on waste of resources and reduces the funeral expenses. Actually, I don't even want a funeral. Really. I'll be happy if most of the people still alive who I think and care about just paused a bit to remember me and note my passing, without institutional religious and falsely pious ritual orchestrated by strangers to which relatives and friends are forced to witness formally, without a grim observance of a burial, and without the expected orgy of sorrow. Pending any hideous or violent or criminal means of death, which could very well happen, I must admit, death can be a joyful time marking one's success at living a life, however spent, and passing on. Why not? No need to be gothic about it.
Sure, I wouldn't want to die a long lingering death trapped in the hands of dubious medical practitioners and their tight and overbearing policies and procedures set in our cold and bureaucratic legal system. I definitely want it quick and as painless as possible. Some people get lucky that way.
Others, not so much. They die at the hands of cruel or thoughtless others way before what should be their time, or linger in acute pain in cold and filth for weeks or even months, if some administrator or unprofessional professional or sinister corporation doesn't find a manner by which to knock them off early, by a slip or sleight of hand, or push of a pencil, or intimidation of an employee or family member, withholding of funds, and such. It's therefore wise to take this possible scenario into account and enter a clause as to how you wish your long term care to be managed, and by whom, and who you wish to act as Power of Attorney as well as Executor. It should also be another factor in making choices about life and medical insurance.
Now, there's the matter of material possessions left behind in the estate. There are plenty of stories about it and I've seen for myself how vulture-like relatives and false friends and concerned neighbours may circle around and swoop down to selfishly and greedily steal property that is not rightly or legally theirs, even violating probate protocol and norms in order to do it. It is among the most disgraceful and despicable kinds of misbehavior that humans can engage in. The belongings of even the poorest should be handled in an ethical, legal, orderly and dignified matter.
I've just realized that I decided to write this blog on this subject of aging and death on the day before the anniversary of my mother's sudden and tragic passing in 1985. I'm only about 13 months away from the same age she was when she experienced the massive heart attack that killed her instantly. In fact, it is exactly on the anniversary of me having a premonition, as close relatives are, that she might be dying at that moment in 1985 and wanted to see her but could not because of my employment schedule. I remember an aunt who'd come to allegedly "pay her respects" and she did it by crassly rummaging through our (my, by then) household closets to take the best of the good clothes my tasteful and knowledgeable seamstress mom had with a look of evil orgasmic pleasure on her face that I had regretted inviting her to help me clear out her things, and even notifying her of my mother's death in the first place. At least my mother went quickly and with minimal pain. I don't despair because I've seen her spirit and I know she has moved on to a better place making brief visits into our lives and is thriving now. I remember when my grandmother passed, in a November six years later, and discovered the criminal deeds committed by a worker in the government care home where she had lived as a victim of severe memory loss for about 20 years. Though we were careful not to keep valuable items in her room there, she had a couple of nice items of clothing, and they disappeared. I remember how warehouse workers in the storage facility rented by the probate office illegally sold an antique chair of my grandmother's before the estate was settled. I also remember my father clutching a cash box and big manila envelope that he had stolen from among my grandmother's things by telling gullible and careless care home staff that he was her biological son, and from which he obtained insurance papers in order to, through more lies to a gullible insurance agent /"friend of the family" that he was entitled to the benefits, when only her five grandchildren were the rightful heirs. Anyway, he eventually got his just desserts. He was always a self-centered immature psychopath and his passing occurred in a befitting manner as a punishment to many of his real crimes, though he always had escaped the law in life because friends and neighbours didn't care, and the bureaucracy and law overlooked the situation of women and children to a great extent. Two of his sons, who had manipulated the choosing of a lawyer, by the way, so as to get control of communication with the lawyer handling the estate (thus costing us more in money and time because the lawyer was less competent than the one I had first selected) tried to snatch property away from the estate in order to benefit themselves, disregarding hereditary rights and fighting with me not only over the lawyer but handling of the property, just as they had fought with me honouring and supporting my mother in my eulogy to her and in arrangements over my grandmother's funeral and estate, only to say later in bewilderment how the lawyer had reprimanded them and made them store the said property until the estate was settled.
That's how people get. Such moments of change or crisis, if you like, in life expose who people really are and where they stand. I don't want family members handling my belongings and death arrangements when I go. No sirree. So, no burial, no funeral, and a will can control what happens to my belongings and how and who does it. I have enough life insurance and it will take care of expenses and there won't be much for those left behind to grab. So, there.
(It's mind-boggling how mean and petty people can get over a few dollars or a couple of ornaments or pieces of furniture and how they may point fingers at people who get a little promotion, or extra money or property than their neighbours when there are super-rich people walking over most of us and stealing from us most of the time. I mean, if you're really concerned about inequality...)
No, death and dealing with death is not so much an issue as is surviving old age, especially because added to all the perils of the world including global warming, war, incurable disease, time, natural disasters, and overcrowding are the bean-counters and capitalist defense league's mean-spirited and totally uncalled for and unconscionable attacks on pensions and social services. Most Western governments were in a kinder and more benevolent mood for a couple of decades, now they are scarier and more ominous than the Grim Reaper. "The population is aging and we can't afford it!" they warn, failing to mention the overall decline in their respective populations. Not only do they spread alarm about how migrants and people of certain profiles and sick people at any age are draining the life blood of society and menacing the rest of us--all of whom who will get old too, by the way-- to justify their miserly and self-serving aims. With this argument that starving and dying seniors are going to starve and deny life to other segments of the population, and with the bias that seniors are non-productive and therefore not very deserving anyway, the authorities, supported by corporate economists and wise men, decided to cut the lifeline of seniors early, thus causing a general decrease in the society's longevity, mortality and morbidity rates. The Canadian government, long after cutting federal social funding transfers to the provinces, they've acquired a habit for blood-letting and just like it, I guess, for there is plenty of wealth to go around. They went merrily swinging the axe at the unemployed, hospital employees and patients, the disabled and mentally ill, renters, women, refugees, immigrants, and--well, pretty much 99% of the population, finally daring to denounce retirement as a whole, and meanwhile slicing benefits. Funniest thing is how they also expect us to pay greater and greater tributes to them and pay for our own emaciation ourselves by heartlessly increasing fees when we have less and less with more and more debts to pay. I mean, they've raised medical plan premiums for most public plan members, deregularized and under-funded public services, maintained inequitable taxation against the least wealthy among the people, allowed inflation to skyrocket, denied the needy housing, increased payroll taxes and utility fees, pared down public services staff to a minimum and laying off thousands at age 55, and on and on, yet chopped social benefits and programs. The Old Age Security maximum benefit was reduced from $800 to $530. They chopped the CPP benefit paid out at age 60 by one-third. Of course, I should mention that they did that after losing a ton (they won't say how much but somebody must know how much) of CPP funds by investing it on the stock market in high-risk ventures. Yes, really.
While they try to force us all into the job market to around age 70, if we don't die before, the government is trying to convince legal experts to raise the legal retirement age to 70. They're scheming to find a way to not to call a public employment contribution pension plan something else and deny more benefits to more people. You'd better be prepared.
My retirement plan has been revamped. I'm having a good time now, and trying to save enough to take care of housing. I'm battling to protect what meager pension payouts I might be eligible for. I'm widening my income-generating options and potential, to leave various lifelines available well past age 70. I live abroad where I can earn a steady income, and pay less in living expenses and save more. I work at keeping my mind and body fit. I'm scouting countries with relatively stable political and meteorological climates in economies, where the little pension check and my slim savings might be stretched the farthest and where decent affordable medical services exist, in which I might decide to settle and live out my final years. There is less to lose if the OAS benefit is so puny. There aren't many survivable employment options left in my home country, Canada, given that it had been getting harder and harder to find regular adequately paying full-time work before I went to work abroad, and given the age-bias and shrinking resources citizens can access. Canada is so ruthless it is trying to double-tax us low-paid teachers abroad even though many of us are in countries with tax treaties that are intended to avoid double taxation. Well, damn it, I've decided to renounce my residency. Hey, I can decide to re-enter any time, and just bide a few months time until I would be back in the stream of things there. All the same I'll have to be on my guard.
Yet, I'm supposedly one of the lucky ones. I come from Canada, a country once envied for its welfare programs and policies, peace-loving and active concern for human rights. Well, all that has changed. It's mean, corrupt, stingy, evil and war and hate-mongering nowadays. so I don't have any particular patriotism. Still, there are great aspects to the people, the land and the heritage. Most folks are benevolent, concerned and peace-loving, so I am loyal to them. Perhaps I'll find a new groove to groove to there, perhaps not.
