I think that’s a good thing. I think it means when I’m done I’ll go fast. Maybe I’ll die the way that I lived, constantly on the move, hopefully not in a car crash or anything painful for a long time. My mantra of my last act has been ‘God, please use me up then take me home fast, if possible’. I do think that may happen. So I’m always a little prepared to be on my best behavior with everyone just in case. I’d rather leave them laughing, or at least not mad at me. It’s pretty easy, actually, as I’m moving a lot more slowly than I did in the past. I don’t have as much to say and these days I’m very grateful to have this little note thing on my phone so I can wake up in the middle of the night and talk to it, just so I don’t lose track of any story I wanted to remember.

I’ve had one heart attack, but I didn’t even know I was having one exactly. Maybe the hospital didn’t either. I didn’t find out until years later when they did a test where they ran dye through my veins and somehow saw my heart like the center of a tree; it had rings in it that somehow showed them that I’ve had a fairly sizable past heart attack. Well, there was that time I drove myself to the emergency room at two in the morning, afraid that my dog wouldn’t know what to do if I keeled over. Then he might die of hunger because nobody checked on me every day and I lived on a very quiet road and didn’t know my neighbors very well; I could easily have gone unnoticed for maybe even a week and I didn’t want to do that to my dog, who had been nothing but faithful. He didn’t deserve that.

I got up and googled it and found I had at least four signs of a possible heart attack. My Dad, his mom, both had several heart attacks before their deaths at ages I was now reaching. I drove myself to the nearest emergency room. They of course put me on treadmills and did all kinds of stupid stuff, keeping me in the ER all night, then sending me home in the morning with an acid reflux pill; only for me to find out five years later that probably was the heart attack now showing up in the rings. Oh well, at least I was home to feed the dog by noon the next day.