It was important. But it wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be. Not for me at least. I suppose it may have been harder for her because it was her mortality we were defining.

Last Wednesday my brother, his girlfriend, and I went over to moms for dinner. She fixed red beans and rice, my favorite meal of hers. She always fixes it for my birthday. But tonight we wouldn’t be talking about birth, but death. Mom was putting together her living will, durable power of attorney, and such. She needed to put one of our names down as the executor. Of course, both my brother and me agreed it doesn’t really matter. There is no doubt that if an event should occur, in which a decision about how to deal with any of these issues, the both of us would be involved. The person who would tell the doctor what to do was irrelevant, be it my brother or me. My name got put down not for any other reason than I volunteered.

My Mom is a simple woman. She believes in “right-to-die” or pain control or whatever the current p.c. term for minimizing suffering of both victim and survivor in the case of tragic events and during severe illness or debilitation. I’m confident my brother and me would be able to make a good decision, and more importantly, my mom is too.

It sucks thinking about this kind of stuff sometimes. And it is can actually pretty depressing if you let it be. But it’s also very necessary. And nothing we discussed actually brought me down. It was just a form of preparation - in case of the unavoidable.