Who wants to live to be 103?
A 102-year-old.

My point of view is not unique, but it is not shared by a large percentage of the population, so I thought I would share it.

I am 84.

It was a struggle getting here but, considering that, you may wonder why I want to stay.

I suffered an extremely abusive childhood. I barely survived my sixth year. It led to years of mental anguish and much therapy to recover. A pattern that was continued in my adult children. I was divorced, enduring not only the loss of my beloved family, but also loss of financial prosperity. I have survived two different malignancies. Recently, I have helped my ex-husband as he passed painfully on and then I managed his estate. Finally, my life seemed to sail out into an open, calm sea with a following wind.

Then covid-19 appeared.

For weeks we have heard stories from Italy and just today from Spain about how stressed hospitals are triaging acutely ill patients. Older people are going to the back of the ventilator line. I have just watched a video of a Spanish doctor crying as he introduced the audio of another doctor, describing how patients older than 65 are being sedated. There are not enough ventilators. Of course, their families are not allowed to be there. Health care workers hold their hands as they suffocate.

As my ex-husband fell into unconsciousness last March, four of us sat beside his bed, talking to him and to each other, laughing even and surrounding him with love as he made his passage. Across the continent, his daughter supported him long distance.

I am 19 years over the cutoff of 65 years used in Spain.

I have changed my care directive. It already said ‘do not resuscitate’. Now it says that I opt not to be treated by ventilator if there is a shortage. Probably unnecessary, but it may help those who have to deny it to me.

But I am not ready as apparently Glen Beck, Lieutenant Governor of Texas, 69, is to die to raise the Dow Jones or the S&P average. Talk about volunteering to be cannon fodder. The economy, like the human spirit, has resources not dreamt of in his philosophy..

I’m lucky that my country, Canada, has a sane and thoughtful leader. He and his cabinet assure us that preparations for the surge of patients that is coming is being prepared for. I have now been in self-isolation for more than two weeks as have most people in my province. I had to go out for food last week. Stores let older people in an hour early. The first store was all but empty. There was a line to get into the second one, everyone six feet apart. I am being very strict with myself, even refusing to join my sister and niece for an at-home movie and pizza. I wash my hands like Lady Macbeth and clean my devices as I’m told.

Eighty-four-years that’s enough surely. Can’t ask for more.

Well, any extra are not going to be subtracted from your allotment. I’ve made that clear. And, surprisingly, where there’s life, there’s hope. Living things do not usually want to become non-living. Some people want badly to stop hurting and confuse that with not living, but the two are not the same.

So when you hear the news that’s supposed to cheer you up that covid-19 is fatal only for the immune-challenged and the elderly, don’t misunderstand. For one thing, young people, even infants and teenagers, have died of it. For the other, a great many of us have underlying health issues and some of us are old. Curiously, we still want to survive.

Yes, we are all afraid. And bored. And under-funded. And going stir-crazy. In that we are as one. Let us carry each other.