I am a planner. I am also a control freak. I turned 60 and old age issues hit me smack in the face and I was not prepared. I also can be brutally honest with myself to force myself to analyze issues from all sides. I am also an optimist by nature. Thinking and talking about death does not feel optimistic to me. But I am also a realist. And I love to talk frankly with my friends about all life’s important topics. But you know what? Many people don’t like talking about death and dying and old age issues. It is taboo and uncomfortable. So to keep from drowning my friends with my brutally honest thoughts about death and dying, I decided to blog about it. If you are 60+, you WILL be able to relate to everything I write about whether you admit it or not. Hopefully my honesty will help you think and plan and be more prepared than me for old age. And maybe your comments will help me think and plan too. So let’s start this relationship with the hardest topic. How do you want to die?

I always told my daughter I want her to take me to the Caribbean, rent a pontoon boat, and just push me off in my wheel chair when it is my time to go. I said this long before I was 60. Remember I am a control freak. But suddenly I am 62 and I have realized that the pontoon boat idea probably is not practical. I need to have a better plan.

My mom died of Alzheimer’s or Dimentia. I am not really sure which but she was not aware of who she was or where she was or who was visiting most of the last year of her life. It was a horrible way to go. She had always been a very conservative, introverted kind of person and at one point she was walking around the halls of the nursing home naked. I know, had she known what she was doing, she would have been humiliated. This is not how I want to go. Nor is this what I want my children to have to deal with in my last year of life.

So, being the control freak that I am I have decided that I will be in control of my death. Now, of course, if I die of a sudden heart attack or in a horrible car accident that will not be in my control. But it would be a wonderful way to die. Quickly and unaware of what is happening. I am afraid of Alzheimer’s. I would rather die from cancer than Alzheimer’s as long as I was cognitive until I died. So how can I plan for my death is the question.

I have looked up states where medically assisted suicide is legal. I know the one that is closest to where I live and it is not my home state. Moving there to die, if I had a long suffering disease is definitely on my list of possibilities. The problem with this solution is you would spend the last year of your life away from your family and friends. I think my family and friends would resent me if I did this.

I do own a gun. I do know how to shoot it. But I am deathly afraid, pardon the pun, that I would do it wrong and just end up in a vegetative state or something like that. I also think that the person who finds you dead would be very traumatized by the situation. I would not want to be someone’s trauma.

So that leaves drugs. Acquiring the right kind of drugs to take where an overdose would be effective could be a challenge. Still I have not ruled out this option and will be hoarding any medicines prescribed to be over the years to come that I think might be helpful. My question here is do expired drugs maintain their effectiveness? I do have children that have dabbled with illegal drugs that could be dangerous. Do you think they would purchase some for me if I told them my intentions? These are the questions I ponder on a regular basis.

I even pay attention to TV shows where people get murdered mysteriously. I heard one show talk about a deadly flower and googled it and saved the name of it for future investigation. The goal is to find the most surefire way to achieve death quickly, painlessly, and without traumatizing the person who finds me afterwards.

So, I have not solved the answer to this question yet. I only have a partial plan (hoarding prescriptions) and I do not like that. Remember I am a planner. I also must add that I am a Christian. So I do pray that God takes me quickly and when I have worn myself out thinking about my death plans that is how I go to sleep. Reminding God of my wishes. But as I have also learned, God does not always make life go the way you want it to go. So this is only a 1/2 consoling thought.

That’s it. My first brutally honest blog about getting old. I tackled the very last thing that happens in life first. In subsequent blogs we will take it backwards from there. I have some really tough questions to ask and thoughts to share and I hope you will feel free to share your thoughts with me on these topics too!