Second Thoughts

  During the last few years of her life, she was in and out of the hospital, a place she despised.  She had been in the vanguard as far as health was concerned.  Way before it was mainstream, she advocated for her own health by  eliminating  desserts, drinking orange juice, and, unusual in the 1950's, engaging in what would now be called power walks, up and down the rural road where she lived, daily walks at a rapid pace.  So when her health started to fail despite her regime, she was at first in denial, and being a person without faith in the afterlife, most likely frightened.  Her husband was dead, so difficult as it must have been for her fiercely independent spirit, she asked for help, by calling my mother.
   So as it happened, it fell on me to drive her to the hospital when she was in distress.  Only I and one other person could possibly know what that entailed.  She was far from the ideal patient.  At the time, there were 3 hospitals in the city she lived in, and we alternated, going from one to the other. 
   Typical of her background and the time in which she lived, she was of  a frugal nature, and her financial assets, though modest by any standards, were of major importance to her.  Sensing the end might be near, because, after all, a common belief of her age group was that hospitals were where you went to die, she would apparently assess her circumstance at the time, as to who would get what upon her passing.  She would summon her lawyer, at first the one who had drawn up her will, and later whatever lawyer she could prevail upon to come to the hospital for semi-regular revisions to her will.  She would never tip her hand as to what heir she was displeased with, or what offense she may have endured or imagined, but she was adamant in her demands.  
    Her plight was a tragic comedy, typical of a person making unrealistic and frivolous demands upon others while faced with  the impending end of her own life--nothing funny about that.  Upon analysis, it seems that it is natural to want to control whatever you can---even if it's only money.