Soon, probably

Will she make it to 2012? Not that dates and numbers matter, but The Complete and Total Loser can't help wondering if his mother will be alive two and a half months from now. 

Not that he'd call her current state "alive." Yes, she's more alive than many. She gets up and eats, showers and all, but the majority of her waking hours are spent either making his 91-year-old father miserable with her petty demands (she bangs her cane against the floor like a hag in a Dickens novel) or just lying there, waiting. The Loser thinks that if he dressed like the Grim Reaper and entered her room she wouldn't be a bit surprised. 

He thinks these thoughts, light ones of her death, almost wishing it would happen soon, then feels awful. He wants his mother to die! When it happens he'll want to slit his throat for this.

But no. The Loser doesn't want his mother to die. His mother is a strong, smart woman who went to work as soon as the Loser, her youngest, was in first grade. She worked full time when many women married to men who made enough for them not to have to stayed home. She did well. She sold real estate before it was a cliche. The Loser's mother is funny, a good singer, stands on her head at parties, rides a motorcycle (for one summer in a vacation town, but still), has smoked pot when it was very illegal, drives too fast and is a good cook. His mother calls the Loser down from his room while washing dishes just for his company, laughs with him at reruns of "I Love Lucy" and Jerry Lewis movies on television when he get home from school, and splits a Tab with him while she's needle pointing, making room for the cat on her lap, and saw him through four leg operations, holding his hand to draw off the pain.

The Loser wants his mother to live forever. The woman he wants dead is the emaciated, feeble, needy woman who's responding to age with bafflement and pain, like a little girl slapped across the face by a stranger on the street. Who responds to the daily loss of life by trying to control others around her, never missing a chance to tell anyone in earshot about every ache. 

That's the woman the Loser wants dead. But when it happens, he'll know that his wished his mother dead also. 

The Loser and his Parents' Will

They know, the Complete and Total Loser's parents, that their ends are near. The Loser's father has made a point of telling him where important documents are stored. Things crop up in conversations and it's no longer with the jocular air it used to be ("Ten years from now! Ho! Ho! I'll be dead!") and they're resigned to their canes and walkers.

Two weeks ago, in one of the conversations with his father, he mentioned that the will divided up their money among the Loser and his two older brothers equally, but that the understanding was that they'd mete it out to the Loser in portions as his life continued.

That's right. They want the Loser's brothers to remind him for the rest of his life that he is, indeed, a loser who, even though over 50, cannot be trusted to behave as an adult with a largish sum of money. 

The Loser let this get under his skin for a week, then blew up at both parents. He made it clear that they should divide whatever they have equally among the three sons and realize that the Loser will neither ask for nor accept money from either of them. The Loser further noted that he has lived well without a handout since shortly after graduating college when, admittedly, he had some trouble getting a job that paid him enough to pay his rent for a year or so. 

The Loser, Christmas, 2010

The Complete and Total Loser’s parents are dying. He doesn’t say that, no one does, but it’s true. His mother has been in declining health for what, a decade now? At least. And she’s gotten substantially worse in the past year, going from frail to feeble. Always the type to require center stage, she lets all around her know this. No stoicism for her! She grunts as if in pain with each step, every movement. Minor procedures are detailed at length and someone must attend if she’s at a hospital even for an outpatient appointment.

The Loser gets peevish with this sometimes but overall is fine with it and does his duty. She is getting ready to commit the ultimate verb. If she needs to be attended by one of her sons, the Loser will comply. When he enters the house he drinks a beer as soon as he can. Then, often, another. He wants to take the edge off and there’s little but edge these days.

More disturbing to the Loser these days is his father, who is in better health than his mother but, a decade older than she is ninety now and hardly robust. A suburbanite since 1950, driving more than a few miles tires him now. Recently he has showed strong signs of clinical depression and his appetite has waned. He barely eats. He, a man whose greatest sin has been gluttony, who has disgusted his son for years by moaning with pleasure (“Umm ... Umm.”) when eating salty, greasy food with his fingers.

He, a man always preternaturally cheerful and optimistic, famous for being easygoing and likable, affable even, he himself calls it depression. The Loser sees the mild thrill his father gets from his lack of appetite, such a difference from the norm. His father doesn’t show his enjoyment openly, of course, and attributes it rightly to his worry over his ailing wife.

In an early, half awake morning hour today, maybe it was yesterday, another reason occurred to the Loser. His parents are playing an end game. Not a game in the sense of a competition. More of a matching game, like kids trying to see how many times they can throw a Frisbee back and forth without letting it hit the ground. The Loser’s father senses his wife’s coming death and is trying to go at the same time. Suicide by failure to thrive. The notion scares the Loser, but seems apt. (How many times has he had the romantic notion of them dying together, tragically, in a plane crash, asleep, on the way home after a delightful vacation?) It’s a selfish idea, the Loser knows. The abrupt end, no lingering death for either, no obligation to figure out the proper etiquette as they decline, no craziness from them. Just sympathy from others. Casseroles from neighbors while he lived in the house for a few months, settling things.

The Loser wants his father to be happy and is surprised how upset he is by his current state. He’d always thought that an overall happy existence would cancel out any brief time of misery at the end as much as it would had it been in midlife or another time. Now, he’s not so sure of this. His mother has always been like the Loser; a bit of a downer, never fully secure and joyous, with happiness a temporary, aberrational state. His father, though, that sweet, smart, kind man, he wants his father to die happy.