Rebuilding Rob

Daily writing prompt

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

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No, my counting is screwed up.

For a long time, I thought that I wanted to live a long life. I was always say – only half-jokingly – to people that i wanted to live to be 412. I think that was more out of a fear of death than really wanting to live an extraordinarily long life.

But even when I responded to this prompt last year, I started to reconsider this idea. The idea of seeing other people be born, live their entire lives, and die while I kept chugging along was too much to process.

As morbid as this sounds, death has been on my mind a lot lately – due to Mother’s fading health. She was discharged from the hospital earlier today and entered “hospice care”.

the first time i heard of hospice care, I thought it was a death sentence. Even still as Guillaume, Phred and I were talking to various health care providers, i needed to have some of my concerns set at ease. Hospice care is about making the patient as comfortable as possible.

hospice care doesn’t mean letting the patient die. But it does mean , in some cases, avoiding medical treatments that might, in fact, cause further harm. For instance, one of the things we discussed was whether or not to resuscitate Mother. If her heart stops, getting “hit with the paddles” can be hard on a 79 year-old who’s already suffering from numerous health issues, including COPD. Furthermore, as most trained people will tell you, if CPR is performed, the recipient can expect to get their ribs broken by it.

It’s not so much that my views on long-life, or even death itself have changed; but seeing Mother go through this – even more directly than I saw The Old Man go – I guess it’s more than I’m getting a different perspective on the final days of life.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts

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• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
• The Moment I Walked Inside a Hallmark Movie

The article “The Road to 412” first appeared in Rebuilding Rob.