There but for the grace...

Task 11, March 14 to March 21

“Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.” Emily Dickinson

I can’t get the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, out of my mind. Hackman was 95. Arakawa was 65. (They were married, btw, in 1991 when Hackman was 61 and Arakawa was 31, which is a sizable age difference, but acceptable in my mind because it was a commitment, not a fling, unlike idiot Bill Belichick, who is 72 and dating Jordan Hudson, age 24–a FORTY EIGHT YEAR difference–which in my book is not acceptable, especially in the light that they flaunt it on social media, and Ms. Hudson posted about their “meetaversary” (a remembrance of the day a couple meet) MEETAVERSARY? Are you kidding me? Do any of you who are reading this celebrate your meetaversary with your significant other? It has to be a millennial thing, but if all of you do celebrate then I am going to dig into my records–or just ask my wife, which is simpler—and she will know the day or at least the month we met—and I will post about it on Facebook next year, and apologize to Ms. Hudson…).

But I digress. Back to poor Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa. According to CBS news, Hackman's cause of death was heart disease with Alzheimer’s disease as a contributing factor, and Arakawa died several days before him of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

Hackman likely died around Feb. 18, when the last activity was detected on his pacemaker.

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Arakawa likely died first, with Feb. 11 being the last time that she was known to be alive. People with hantavirus infections can initially feel flu-like symptoms for roughly three to six days and then start to have fluid in and around their lungs.

And guess what hantavirus infection is? Hantaviruses are found worldwide, carried by rodents and transmitted from animals to humans!!! What the hell! (And the word “feces” was mentioned, which makes it more ickier).

Did Hackman know his wife was dead? The medical examiner said this: "That question is difficult to answer, but I can tell you that he was in an advanced state of Alzheimer's and it's quite possible that he was not aware that she was deceased."

(Involuntary shudder, or as they say on “Crime Junkie”: Full. Body. Chills.)

But, to be frank, after my first reaction (which lasted at least an hour or so) passed, all I could think about was the adage “there but for the grace of God go I”, because damn it, I don’t want the missus and I to go out of this world like Hackman and his wife did. Why wasn’t anyone checking in on Gene and Betsy? A family member, friends, a neighbor? There must have been SOMEONE–for christ sake, he was a movie star! Where was his agent?

Well, I know that I can’t control whether or not I get Alzheimers, and I don’t know if some sneaky rodents aren’t scurrying around under my house as I write this, plotting a feces attack–THE BASTARDS–but I WILL NOT allow myself and my wife to shuffle through the rest of our lives without some sort of a support system in place. We’ll die, sure. But for heaven’s sake, not like that…

TASK:

You do not wait. Right now, while you can still read and comprehend these words–enlist a troop of people–relatives (younger than you), friends, neighbors, anyone frankly, who will check in on you on a regular basis; and, when they can’t reach you–find out why.