> > My mother died last week,

GG> Please accept my condolences. I too am an orphan.

 Thank you, Gaelyne  I'm actually feeling a bit guilty because I'm
not feeling too bad about it. Everyone keeps ringing me to ask how I'm
dealing with it, being all alone in an empty house and I have to
pretend it's hard.

 The reality is that at 97 Mum was two years past her use-by date,
and the hard part was watching her run down slowly for the last ten
years, picking up what she could no longer handle. The last two years
at home was hell for me. I was giving 24/7 care and when it finally
became too much and I put her in a home, I had to wear that, going to
see her every day with all the other poor-old dickheads and Mum as bad
as any of them, getting worse, and the last year of that upset me so
much I'd occasionally come home and cry.

 This is the easy part... and the next person I meet at a party or
something, who says he's against euthenasia, is going to get a nose
full of knuckle. My mother has been *trying* to die for two years, but
the system is set up to prolong the agony for no reason at all. It's
only in the last days that the doctor gets real...

 It's sad that my mother is no longer here, but it's the *thought* of
her I miss, memories of the way she used to be, not the reality of how
she was at the end.

 I'm really happy that I've got a bad heart, and that my end will be
quick.

Regards,
Bob
      

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5