Our cohort is dying/dementing [View all]

My husband's younger brother died unexpectedly right after Thanksgiving. He was 75 and the only member of the family who seems to have dodged the asshole gene (my husband was only slightly affected and has too many other good qualities to be the asshole the rest of them are). He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton, and his senior thesis, on Samuel Beckett, was published. He was funny as hell and a joy to be with.

We had husband's older brother (81) for Christmas and it's a miracle of Jesus' birth that we didn't murder him. He is losing his marbles as well as physically deteriorating. We had him come to us by train (he lives about a 5-hour drive away) because his wife died in September, and we didn't want him driving alone. She was 93, and we didn't realize how much he relied on her until we got him here without her. He broke our Stair-Lift (we got one for him after his wife died because he kept falling down the stairs, and now I wonder if his stair lift works) and wouldn't stay out of our 8x10 kitchen so we could prepare Christmas dinner. He drank a bottle of vodka and a bottle of Canadian Club (he was here for five days) and argued with me about where the sports channels were on our TV.

I had diarrhea from the day he arrived until the day he left. Their sister, 75, drove him back home. No more train because when he arrived here, he wandered through the station for an hour before we could find him.

Despairing for the world because the young folks don't seem to care enough to protest *anything*. They're upset because they can't afford to buy a house. They don't seem to care that there are people in our community who don't have any kind of shelter, much less a house they own, or even enough to eat. While young folk order everything--even toilet paper--and pay outrageously for food they could make at home, they don't understand why they can't get together enough money to make a down payment.

But happy new year, everybody. I wonder for how many of us this is our last year.