My parents have recently started saying things to me like, "If something happens to me, my will is here..." or "I don't want an expensive funeral. If you can't get me cremated for under $3000, just put me in the burn barrel..." or "I've put you down as the beneficiary on (insert name of policy or fund)."
My parents are young. Here is a list of celebrities older than my parents:
Oprah
Howard Stern
Bruce Willis
Denzel Washington
Dennis Quaid
Kim Basinger.
My point here is that my parents are still in their prime. I don't need to hear about their death plans. Rationally, I realize it is very responsible for them to be so prepared. Psychologically, it is too soon.
Though, at the same time, I am more concerned about MY post-death arrangements for my turtle who I'm pretty sure will out live me. Does anyone want my turtle after I die?
The older you get, the more you think about death. Right? Well the older I get, the more I think about serial killers.
Serial Killers.
I watch Criminal Minds EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. This has trained me to be uniquely qualified to assume that every weirdo I see is a murderer.
Case in point.
Two days ago, I pulled up to the office and my normal parking space was taken. I had to park in front of a shady looking house. As soon as I got out of the car, a man pulled up in his truck (it had a canopy, all the better for hiding bodies) and got out with his bag of Burger King (the nutritional go-to of stabbers, shooters, and stranglers). He was wearing sweatpants (the uniform of psychotics) and had a shaggy goatee (murders are genetically programmed to grow mullets on their face).
I went to work sort of perturbed to know I had to be careful about parking near his house and sort of excited that all my research (television watching) had finally paid off. This was doubly confirmed when, without prompting from me, MW randomly told me the same man often has bottles and bottles of empty bleach sitting on his porch.
Bleach. The official sponsor of serial killers.
Yesterday I came out of my house and found a body in the driveway. Luckily, not a dead body. Just a disoriented and ill hobo who had wandered up the driveway to pet the garbage cans. During his tactile affair with the trash bin, he passed out. I called 911. After a time, they took him away.
In the three seconds it took me to realize he was not dead, I reacted very calmly to just the idea of a dead stranger on the property. This is probably because I've seen dead people before. I've done post-mortem care on nursing home patients. I've watched them get zipped up in body bags, wheeled into a hearse and taken away by the mortician.
I was 18 the first time I saw a dead person not related to me. Right after I graduated high school, I took a two week course and was certified as a nurse's assistant. I worked at a nursing home the summer before my first year of college and would go on to work at the same nursing home every summer and school break for the next four years.
In my first week as a CNA, one of the residents passed away. It was our responsibility to clean up the deceased and prepare them to be moved to the funeral homes. There were two other CNA's working that night and one of them outright refused to do the post-mortem care. The third CNA was pretty nervous.
We cautiously approached the deceased patient and worked through the to-do list. It is a short list. Essentially, administer a sponge-bath, wrap them in a sheet, collect their important personal belongings (glasses, teeth, jewelry, watch, etc).
That night, as we rolled the patient over to her side, the last of the air from her lungs released in an audible woosh.
My partner in care immediately let go of the body and left the room, leaving me to go it alone.
So I guess you could say I became desensitized to death at an early age.
It is weird to hear my parents talk about their own mortality when I've yet to get my first grey hair, when I'm still clueless about under-eye cream, and AARP is a distant need.
Until my parents look like Clint Eastwood or Betty White, I'm not going to be too concerned about their post-mortem care.
But just to be safe, maybe I should start stockpiling bleach.
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