Vitamin Death

All good things - and even the bad - must come to an end.

This fact my darling son, Ethan, brought into sharp focus during breakfast this morning.

"Mom," my girl, Summer, had just suggested. "For the whole last year of your life you should just go back to eating sugar." I heard in her voice her deep sympathy for anyone who exists without the sweet substance, and her earnest desire for me to enjoy it after I my days were numbered.

"But Summer," I said, laughing. "How will I know when that year begins?"

We both giggled - and I thought the subject was closed.

"But Mom," Ethan cut in - wheels churning hard behind his thatch of pumpkin-pie-orange hair. "What if that last year of your life was the year you were all crumpled up in bed, like a dead spider? All bony and wrinkled ..."

His voice trailed off. Clearly, he'd seen the look of disgust on my face inspired by the vivid picture he just painted.

"Um .." he began. Trying hard not to laugh.

"Um ..." I echoed faintly, unsure how to respond.

In the end, we both dissolved into giggles. The image of my poor body, exactly 365 days before my death, suddenly seizing up like a dead spider, proved to be too hard to resist.

True, death can come unexpectedly. And whenever it does, it's surely not pretty.

But knowing it will arrive - accepting the inevitable - and perhaps, event throwing out a "dead spider" joke or two as it slowly draws near - helps break the tension that surrounds such an inescapable event.

At any rate, it sure does for me. Someday, when I lie shriveled up in my bed, I'll have a good chuckle at the aptness of my son's youthful description. I fervently hope that my bony, wrinkled face will be smiling so much in those last days that it'll become my natural expression - something to counteract the hideousness of my "dead spider" body, in the end.

Cheers to life! And to death! And to the reality that there's more, after both, than we can possible imagine!

Cheers to kids.