elder bury

“i hope i die before i get old” – roger daltry, october 1965

“it sucks being the same age as old people” – me, 2021

this has really started to come to light as of late with my uncle arthur. for some reason, when dad died in 2020 in my eyes that was it for me. no mas. he was the “last of that generation” of the family because he was my last parent. it also closed out that side in a couple ways – he was the last of the three brothers to go, and now the family plot was full at weed corley. “the end of an era”, as it were…

…but wait – not so much.

a couple weeks ago my uncle suffered heat exhaustion or a heat stroke – i’m not sure which. this was due to him getting a new (to him) vehicle recently and but, as i believe i mentioned, after a few weeks of not driving and not really leaving his trailer it seemed he was having unprecedented mobility issues. i chalked this up to him being at an age where his tendons and ligaments were getting to the “if you don’t use us you lose us” phase and figured now that he was more out and about he’d be fine.

he wasn’t fine.

so when they called me asking me to come out and help him, and i was more than an hour away, but there’s a fire station literally five minutes from his place, i suggested they call 911. that day it was 109° – that is not weather you fuck around in. they waited several hours before calling – he ended up hospitalized. from there it’s gone downhill further, with him now being in a senior living facility that looks the quality you see on “60 Minutes” and shit.

he doesn’t have me listed on any of his paperwork, so i don’t have any rights to any info. he also is still worried about “cell phone minutes” (is that even remotely a thing?) so he’ll call me and leave these desperate, pathetic sounding voicemails and then turn his phone off so you can’t call him back. at the one star rated* facility where he’s at there aren’t any room phones, so once he turns it off he’s unreachable.

it’s a pretty bad scene that doesn’t appear to be getting better any time soon. he’ll be eighty-six in october – let’s hope we both survive this to see that date roll by!

*if you google it, it’s actually a 2.8 star place with nine reviews, but three of them seem to be legit, with actual issues brought up, and the other six are all four words max saying things like, “great staff, nice building” and then the next one would be “great building, nice staff”, etc, which were clearly placed by staff to balance the real ones out.