BOOMERANGST: Hope I Die Before I Get Old

By Roy Trakin

If you view life as a football game, when you enter your 50s and 60s, it’s basically the third quarter. Halftime is over, and now you have to get your finishing kick going and aim for a strong conclusion.

Not to get too morbid on ya, but one of the tasks we Boomers must undertake at this point is caring for our aging parents. It’s a frightening proposition, the roles reversed from when they nurtured and raised us, as they begin to revert back to an infant state in which they must be the ones looked after.

With modern health care allowing us all to live longer, the question at some point becomes quality of life. A colleague of mine just put his mother, who recently lost her husband, in a Jewish home for the aging in the Valley for a cool $10k a month, and the first day there, she breaks her arm in a fall, further frightening someone already anxious from the gradual loss of independence.

It makes you think about your own future, along with the possibility of death with dignity, and whether Kevorkian was really a monstrous Dr. Death or just another Good Samaritan. If you had the choice now to die peacefully in your sleep at 78, say, or take your chances with a slow, painful demise for the next 10-15 years, what would you do?

It’s funny, because this week’s Dexter, in which the main character, played by the great Michael C. Hall, is a committed vigilante killer out to correct the oversights of justice by taking matters into his own hands, delves into this kind of mercy euthanasia. A childhood friend slowly dying of cancer literally begs him to put her out of her misery, a request Dexter, used to murdering the guilty, is at first reticent to perform. In the end, he feeds her a poisoned piece of key lime pie (she had previously asked him for a slice of the best he could find), and she goes out grateful to him.

Of course, no one goes out willingly, even if none of us get out of here alive, so it remains a hypothetical question. As Dexter’s sister, Debra (the sassy Jennifer Carpenter) insists that she would never let him suffer, you wonder if you would pull the plug if asked, or if you’d want someone to do the same for you. And if you think dying in your sleep at 78 is the way to go, get back to me when you’re 77 and tell me then if you’re ready. It’s not as easy as it sounds.