Everyone, if things go the way they are supposed to, loses their parents. I made some assumptions about my life, namely that I would be dead before my parents passed away and that goes for most of my friends too. I know, at the best of times, I only have a tenuous grasp on ‘the will to live’ and have always suspected my poor life choices would see me in the ground before everyone else. Ironically I was considering taking my own life this July 4th…but circumstances have changed and who knows if that makes things better or worse. Yeah, yeah, I must not be that committed to suicide if I can put it off, that’s the brilliant thing about it; choice. I’m not despairing, I’m not ‘sad’ or depressed; I just feel like I’ve reached the end and don’t see the point in continuing to trudge through the last decade or two of my life watching everyone I care about fade into shadows of their former selves. It’s a selfish decision and I know it. Mostly, I do give a shit about other people and help them out whenever I am able. This includes helping my mother deal with my father’s death. From death, springs life? I said it was ironic.

Now I will assist her and help get my father’s stuff sorted and get her life re-organized. She is keen to have me move in with her, but dude! I’m 57 and moving back in with my parent isn’t not something I want to do. I don’t like my space, I LOVE my space. Added to this is the fact that she lives over a hundred miles from my ‘friend group’, living with someone and being out of my happy zone? Ugh! Dogs are fine life companions, cats and I get along fine too, but I don’t care for litter box maintenance. Me, a dog or two and a patio to enjoy at night, that’s what I need. The biggest problem is my financial life is entering a stage of baren famine; I lost my job about a year and a half a go and, barring three months working for the USPS, I haven’t been able to pry my way back into gainful employment. So July 4th was a good end date. I like the holiday, not the politics, just stuff blowing up in the sky with pretty colors. The dogs, they don’t care for it so much. But I’ll leave the door open and they can wander into the relative sound-shelter of the house. So what to do? I can’t “keep on keeping on” if I am evicted, and I feel like I should stick around to assist. Quite the quandary. I don’t have the answer yet, I hope it comes to me in the next couple of days…