Amy Koss: Live forever, or die trying

In theory, I approve of death for the old. You live as long as you can, and then you die. I accept that the balance of nature requires the inevitability of death. The system works out to be essentially fair.

But today's news from home was that my mom's friend, Bernice, woke up to find Marty (her husband of nearly 60 years) lying dead beside her. That was a shock for everyone.

True, Marty was 80-plus and had played fast and loose with his diabetes, but still. He was one of my parents' close pals. Marty wasn't the first of their friends to die. He wasn't even among the first. But after a while, enough is enough, and you want to say, "Cut it out, already! What are you, lemmings?"

That's the downside of living a long time. My parents go to a lot of funerals. They've become eulogy connoisseurs. They know where the bathrooms are at the funeral homes. They get a lot of horrible phone calls. Some expected, others totally shocking.

"Actually," my mom says, matter-of-factly, "it gets less shocking."

One thing I've learned, though, watching my tribe die off, is that there's no tidy line. One guy can be circling the drain, round and round, when -- zip! -- someone else, totally unexpected, darts out of place and takes cuts. Some of the most unlikely people end up dying that way, all out of order.

But my parents and their remaining friends have kept patiently in step, and, thanks to medical advances, health insurance, careful diet and exercise, they are right on schedule, arriving all together at the edge of the last cliff.

I want to say, "Listen, Ma, just because everyone's doing it. ... I mean, if all your friends were smoking crack...."

But it's hard not to see what's coming. My father is basically bionic, with multiple bypasses and a pacemaker and whatnot. He spends a big part of his mornings washing down a multitude of pills from little brown jars on the counter. But in spite of the meds, the violin fell out of his hand during a concert a few years ago, hinting that some fairly significant aspects of his life are over.

My mother, once a great reader, is practically blind.

My father-in-law is in hospice and has stopped using his hearing aids. He says he found the dying experience interesting at first, but now that he's feeling weak, he likes it a lot less. I half expect him to give up on the whole thing and return to his former health.

My own knees crackle at the thought of sitting on the floor, my hands ache in the morning and I pee whenever I cough. The history of my species -- in fact, of all living things -- gives me reason to suspect that these symptoms of age are not likely to reverse. My husband is wearing not one but two pairs of glasses to read the paper beside me.