{"id":32427,"date":"2020-12-19T00:01:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T08:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=32427"},"modified":"2020-12-19T00:01:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T08:01:28","slug":"getting-ready-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/getting-ready-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Getting Ready to Die. Just in Case. Sheltering at Home Week 40"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_32691\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32691\" style=\"width: 1118px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/ noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-32691 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_6212-resized-1118x628.jpg\" alt=\"getting-ready-to-die Chagall-Paradise-God\" width=\"1118\" height=\"628\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-32691\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I&#8217;m getting ready to die &#8212; in case God decides to scoop me up and send me back to paradise. <em>Detail from &#8220;Paradise,&#8221; a lithograph by Marc Chagall. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>December 18, 2020. Sheltering at Home Week 40<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m getting ready to die.<\/p>\n<p>Just in case.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, I stay safely in denial when it comes to death &#8211; my death. It&#8217;s not going to happen to me for decades. If then. If ever.<\/p>\n<p>But now that the coronavirus has taken out more than 300,000 Americans &#8212; 80 percent of them age <a href=\"https:\/\/covid.cdc.gov\/covid-data-tracker\/#demographics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">65 or older\u00a0<\/a>&#8212; and now that at least two of my high school classmates have succumbed to covid, I&#8217;m seeing that I might be mortal after all. I could die. I could die soon. I could die <em>next<\/em> <em>month<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>If that&#8217;s the case, then obviously I need to get organized. Get ready. Get things done. Prioritize. Declutter. Get going on my gotta-do list.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot on that list:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get the family photos &#8212; thousands of them &#8212; scanned and digitized.<\/li>\n<li>Fix the decrepit garden stairway before somebody falls and breaks a hip. Me, for instance. Or worse, Jon.<\/li>\n<li>Finish my second book.<\/li>\n<li>Start on my third book.<\/li>\n<li>Get a mammogram.<\/li>\n<li>Get a haircut.<\/li>\n<li>Send some money to the grand- and step-grandkids&#8217; college funds.<\/li>\n<li>Send some money to the county <a href=\"https:\/\/www.accfb.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">food bank<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Do something about that sweet little essay I wrote years ago, inspired by my teenaged daughter&#8217;s messy bedroom. It&#8217;s buried somewhere in an obscure file inside another obscure file in my laptop. Nobody knows about it. What if I get covid and wind up in intensive care with a ventilator down my throat? How will Christina know that there&#8217;s a love letter to her lost in the hot mess that is my laptop?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I could spend the rest of this afternoon adding to this list. Fill it up with all that stuff crying out to be done.<\/p>\n<p>Instead &#8212; to heck with my list. I&#8217;m going to do the one thing I feel like doing today. I&#8217;m going to go down to the basement, locate the fake Christmas tree, bring it upstairs and spend some quality time with myself, wrapping Jon&#8217;s Christmas presents &#8212; which is my idea of fun.<\/p>\n<p>If I have just weeks to live, I&#8217;m going to spend my last weeks on earth doing what I\u00a0want to do.<\/p>\n<p>Does that mean I&#8217;m ready?<\/p>\n<p><em>If this post did not get you down, then you might be up for <a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2010\/04\/11\/a-case-of-the-human-condition-the-trouble-with-daffodils\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;The Trouble With Daffodils &#8212; And My Writing.&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0 If you&#8217;d rather treat yourself to something beautiful, go to <a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2014\/08\/28\/point-and-shoot-heaven-photographing-a-garden-in-minnesota-just-before-dusk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;A Flower Garden Just Before Dusk.&#8221;<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_32693\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-32693\" style=\"width: 1118px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/ noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-32693 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_6207-resized-1118x628.jpg\" alt=\"getting-read-to-die but first the Christmas-gifts\" width=\"1118\" height=\"628\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-32693\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Today, getting ready to die involved wrapping holiday gifts for Jon. <em>Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/ noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-32693 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_6207-resized-1118x628.jpg\" alt=\"getting-ready-to-die-    Christmas-gifts\" width=\"1118\" height=\"628\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The coronavirus is out there. So I&#8217;m getting ready to die &#8212; starting with making sure my holiday gifts for my husband are wrapped and ready.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/2020\/12\/19\/getting-ready-to-die\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,41],"tags":[103,2381,35,2382,2179,187,34,82,2383],"class_list":["post-32427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-aging","tag-babyboomers","tag-christmas","tag-christmas-tree","tag-coronavirus","tag-death","tag-dont-miss","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}