How To Make God Laugh Today

Keep making plans...

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god is laughing at you

Where do you see yourself in five years? I hated that question. Once you’re over fifty, no one asks, because, you know…you could be dead in five years. Easily half my life I was a drunken drug addict who couldn’t imagine a life lasting five more weeks no less years, but there was a time before the booze and drugs.

I had actual plans for life.

A) is for All I wanted to be was a garbageman, hanging off the side of mucky garbage trucks and never having to dress up.

B) is for Barbie Dream House. I grew up with very little money, rubber bands held my knee socks up before asking for a new pair. Family outings were often drives through rich Long Island neighborhoods, smashing my face against the window of our VW bus, trying to catch a glimpse of houses I’d never be invited in to, with entryways bigger than our Levitt house. Usually, all we saw was a gatehouse or a long windey paved driveway, but it was enough for me to start formulating a life that didn’t involve hanging off a garbage truck in dirty coveralls. The new plan involved a rainy night. I’d find my way to one of these champagne wishes/caviar dreamhouse towns, walk up a long driveway in my red footy pajamas, and lay down at their front door. In the rain.

I was that particular kind of little blond child who would appear irresistibly adorable when wet, bedraggled and having amnesia of unknown origin.

Had I figured out a way to get there without Daddy driving the pea soup green VW, I could’ve made it work, but at three or four or even five, my feet didn’t reach the gas pedal. I flipped my rocking horse over—drawing a steering wheel and doors on it in crayon, turning it into a car—and “practiced” driving while watching cartoons and Soupy Sales. I’d be prepared when the chance to become a bedraggled amnesiac finally came. It didn’t.

C) is for Cardiac Arrest. With maturity came some practicality. Three years before Anna Nicole Smith was even born, I had plans to find and marry a rich old man–emphasis on rich, double emphasis on old—and hope for a heart attack on the honeymoon. Alternately, I’d push him down the stairs and call it a heart attack. I was seven or eight and the only stairs I could picture were those in my parents’ house, and while the carpeting might soften the fall, the glass door to the backyard at the bottom of the stairs would surely seal the deal and my inheritance.

D) is for Divorce. I’d write lovely thank you notes monthly to whichever wealthy man I could find to marry and quickly divorce me in exchange for alimony. I would’ve happily been a beard for a closeted movie star, an opportunity that never presented itself.

E) is for Exotic. In another few years, I’d start thinking about being a “high class” call girl living in the city where I’d get to dress up and sleep late (the polar opposite of my OG I want to be a garbageman when I grow up, because they only seemed to work in the mornings and never dressed up). The only “city” apartments I knew were in the Bronx. My grandparents. Which explains why my fantasy fancy tween call-girl would be sleeping on a pull-out couch she shared with two other girls, in an exact duplicate of my grandma’s apartment. We had bouffant hairdos and only wore see-through shortie nighties with marabou trim and matching kitten-heeled marabou trimmed bedroom slippers. We never left the apartment. Or the living room. Or had male visitors. It was not a fully developed plan.

Tween hooker bouffants, inspired by these plastic wigs that fit all head sizes.

F) is for Firearms. Years passed, booze, anger, and drugs took priority over needing a man for inheritance, alimony or payment for services rendered. I considered joining the army to learn demotion and all the ways to kill someone, many someones, entire blocks or cities. Inspired by Brenda Vaccaro, in the Streets of San Francisco, when my tour was up, I’d come home and get invited to work for the Mob as a hitwoman.

Those were my five year plans.

I’d never planned to live very long. Or get sober. Or get sober enough and live long enough that my mother would need care. My plans never really involved anyone other than myself—and ex- or late-husbands, neither of whom ever materialized. But there you have it, as they say, you want to make god laugh, tell him/her your plans.

I haven’t gotten married, or divorced. I haven’t pushed a husband (or anyone else for that matter) down any stairs. There were many Bronx nights, but no Bronx addresses. Instead of fake amnesia, I had real blackouts and traumatic memory loss. I was never anything high-class, but I have, on occasion, sold my ass and shown my boobers. I’ve thought about killing certain people, but never have. I did, however, work for the Mob on and off from 1974 -1984 (see above re: showing and shaking boobers).

So, I am capable of making plans.
Following plans is an entirely nother skill set.

Here’s what I didn’t plan for.

I didn’t plan for a visit to a gerontologist where I’d get to explain how more and more Mom doesn’t know who I am or where she lives. That sometimes she wakes up worried about making her high school graduation speech in front of her whole class. That she was losing weight she couldn’t afford to lose, stopped walking outside of the house, sleeps a lot, eats almost nothing, is never thirsty and constantly dehydrated.

I mean, I’d planned to talk to him about all that—but I hadn’t planned for all that to be happening. Not yet. He increased her anti-depressants. We all agreed, she had a legitimate reason to be depressed.

Then he said, “Not now, but soon, you want to start thinking about comfort care. Making plans for palliative care.” That was ten years ago.

Those were not plans I’d considered.
It took my breath away for that moment, that would never have been part of any five-year plan I could imagine making.

We’d talked about end-of-life plans, me and Ma, since I was a kid. She’d started hoarding pills years ago. I’d be told that many dementia patients do this, but by the time it’s “the right time,” they’re too far gone to do anything. Most of her stash turned out be expired antibiotics, Valium that were crumbling into dust, and other pills not appropriate for the job she wanted them to do.

We talked about moving to Oregon, Washington, Vermont or six more states compassionate to the belief you have the right to make your own decisions about dying, where right-to-die legislation had passed. But with dementia, while actually terminal, she was never going to fit the criteria. She’d need to be:

1. mentally competent—able to make & communicate healthcare decisions; and

2. diagnosed with a terminal illness that’ll lead to death within six months; and

3. able to self-administer and ingest the prescribed medication.

So much for plans.
God laughs.
I spent a sleepless night Googling palliative care, palliative care costs, palliative vs comfort care.

Ten years later, she’s been on & off hospice twice, shaken off both Covid and pneumonia. Her vitals are good.

And god is still laughing.

@whimcomic

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