Why is Dying So Embarrassing?
Because it’s the ultimate fail.
I’m not going to tell you another COVID story (enough already) other than to tell you that my Dad has it.
But I am going to tell you about all the people who told me, in one way or another, that it’s our fault. Our family did it all wrong. And now we feel embarrassed, ashamed.
There was the nurse who works for my Dad’s neurologist: she told me that I should never have put him in assisted living — never mind that his Parkinson’s disease was making him fall in the shower, and we didn’t want to see his head cracked open on the bathroom floor.
There’s the childhood friend, one I’ve known since kindergarten, who brags that she’s hermetically sealed her elderly parents into a tight bubble. After she fake-complains about having grocery shopped for them for months — not even trusting the random delivery person — she’ll ask how my father is, knowing full well he’s not well. She knows he’s suffering. She knows I wish I could have sealed him up tight too. The undercurrent of it all: I did right by my parents. You didn’t.
There’s the physical therapist who, when I asked if he wore a mask through the whole session, lectured me on his strong immunity “because he takes care of himself” — the implication being that everyone else doesn’t, in fact, take…
