Rant #3,177: Time Is On My Side

… And now Mick Jagger turns 80 years of age …

It is like I said the other day, we, along with our past icons, are all growing older, and we are all growing older together.

But Sinead O’Connor is not growing older with us.

She died yesterday at age 56, and with her, you almost have to wonder why she died at such a relatively young age.

Her immense talent was overshadowed by the fact that she had severe mental and psychological problems, and since no cause of death has been released, you really have to wonder.

The current hot phrases when someone dies are “died suddenly” and/or “no cause of death was given.”

When you see those phrases attached to an obituary, with no further details, it leads me to believe that there is a bit more to their death than we are being told, and I don’t have to spell out those details to you; I think you can figure them out yourself.

Let’s talk about life …

My mother is doing better, at least physically.

Whatever scars she has from her stay in the hospital are either healed or getting there quickly, and she is moving around quite a bit better than she had been just a few weeks ago.

But her dementia has gotten noticeably worse, and if anything gets her, I think it is going to be that, not whatever is rolling around in her body.

Yesterday, she was dancing with her attendant, who also takes her outside to do some walking.

At the suggestion of a counselor, we have gotten my mother a book to write her thoughts in, and I have read some of them, and her memory is pretty much intact when it comes to things from 50 or more years ago—

Anything current, she cannot remember a thing.

She often does not know when it is daytime or nighttime, when to sleep and when not to sleep.

It is sad, but she is doing the best she can—and she has told all of us, flat out, that her time has not come yet, she has plenty of life left in her, and that she believes that she can live to 100 years of age.

Knowing my mother, I would not put it past her, I really wouldn’t.

She is not the mom of, say 1976, but she still has a lot of vim and vigor to do exactly what she said she wants to do, and that is to really defy the odds and reach her age goal.

I know that toward the end of his life, my father had just about had enough, and he passed away when he had reached his limit.

My mother is quite different; she does not feel that she is done yet.

She often asks me, “Why did this happen to me?” and quite frankly, I don’t have an answer for her.

We now know that it was a progressive decline, one that took many months to fully come out and show itself, but again, if former president Jimmy Carter can live in hospice with brain cancer for more than five years, I would not put it past my mother to be our very own “Jimmy Carter.”

Sure, that is a lot to ask of her, but if she feels that she still has a lot to live for, then why not?

So much of our population is living to 100 years of age and beyond, that it is not that unusual to hear of someone who is 102, 107, even 112 years of age—so different than it used to be when people generally died in their 70s and 80s.

Of course, living to such an age must come with a good quality of life while getting to that age; if the quality of life is not there, why live so long?

But while my mom might not be as sharp as she once was, with the right people around her, her quality of life is high, so why shouldn’t she live as long as she wants to live?

Can you imagine Mick Jagger living to 100 while he sings “Time Is On My Side?”

Well, my mom can do it too, if that is what she wants to do.