Watching people die of old age in old-time, and modern Phoenix


As a typical city boy of the 21st Century, I don't see much death, except abstractly. I may read an article about someone dying, or someone may tell me about someone's death, but that's all. As a time-traveler, I realize that most of the people in the old photos that I have are all dead (especially in this one, from 1905), but it isn't something that I dwell on, or talk about. But I want to talk about it today.

I've never watched anyone die of old age, but I know that a lot of people have, and still do. Only a few generations ago in Phoenix most people died of old age at home, not in a hospital, or at a nursing home. And their family got to see the process.

The closest I'll ever come to watching someone die of old age is seeing my dog grow old. Very, very old. She's healthy, and strong, but there's a limit to her little doggy life, and I'm watching it very slowly ebb away. Her hearing and vision are fading, and even her super doggy nose isn't what it used to be when she was younger. It's natural, but it's still hard to watch.

And I can understand why people don't want to just sit back and accept death, even from old age. Hospitals and doctor's offices here in Phoenix are filled with people who are always getting some type of "procedure" to extend their lives. But people are human beings, they're not like old cars that aren't worth fixing anymore. Still, time takes its toll, and as a very wise friend of mine once said, "We aren't supposed to last forever, you need to give someone else a chance".

Speaking for myself, I have a DNR, and have filled out the correct forms, signed and notarized, so that I can simply die of old age, and never go back to a hospital (unless I break a leg or something!). I'm astonishingly healthy, even at my advanced age, and my chances for living an extremely long life are very good.

But I won't live forever, and even if I just die of old age, people will have to see that process. That's just the way it is, and the way it always has been.

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!

  Buy Me A Coffee

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more