there is still fun to have

I already know what will happen at the end of the book The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian. It's a story that's referenced now and then on The Alzheimer Spouse, an online forum for spouses of AD people, and it's easy to infer, both from AlzSpouse and the Amazon review, that the narrator--an elderly woman with multiple health issues of her own caring for a spouse with dementia--is going to take things into her own hands, in a manner endorsed only by certain brave independent souls and the Hemlock Society.

This might be a risky admission, but I recall an exchange I had with Rachel, on the topic of Jeff's and my upcoming Fall trip to the Grand Canyon. I made mention of how we'd be among the less adventurous visitors. Jeff may have backpacked a northern chunk of the Appalachian Trail in the 70s, but these days vision and balance are not among the features we can rely upon, and we'll be sticking with relatively short, level, and well guard-railed ways to access the view. Then Rachel said something like this: "Yes, well...but if you've got to kick it..."

What she meant, of course, and frankly, was to pose the following rhetorical question: Would you, at stage 5 out of 7 in the game of Alzheimer's, rather see the thing to its inevitable conclusion, or would you rather fall into the Grand Canyon?

But don't worry. I will not push Jeff in, and I will, furthermore, strive to keep him away from any close encounters with gravity. Nor are his children angling for any other approach. Rachel is just one of those unusual kinds of people who, at 23, already grasp that life is tragic, absurd, possibly pointless, and most likely worthwhile anyway. And as for me, though I have no beef with Dr. Kevorkian, my philosophical position regarding hastening anybody's death, mine included, can best be summed up by a line from Joe Versus the Volcano. Joe, asked by Angelica whether he'd ever contemplated suicide, replies: Some things take care of themselves...they're not your job.

So, yes...that'll take care of itself. For all of us. Might as well stick around and watch things play out in the meantime. It could be interesting.

The Leisure Seeker meanwhile, awaits on my Kindle, and it is next up when I climb aboard the elliptical. (Tomorrow? Maybe...gotta go car shopping...) I've just finished Super Freakonomics, and I highly recommend--especially--the last chapter which deals with the potential for geo-engineering solutions to the global warming-related climate quandary. But now onto something that is apt to make me cry. It will. I will ellipt and cry, but really, I'm fine with that.