I used to be able to describe each encounter with a doctor who predicted my imminent decline or impending death.  They would use various medical expressions which all meant, Don’t buy any long-term investments.  Words such as, completely bedridden, peppered the sessions with me huddling in a chair and my mother’s grim face turned towards the white-clad men with half-moon glasses balanced on their foreheads.

In later years, my mother’s chair might be occupied by a husband or a friend, but the message echoed those sixties-era pronouncements.  In their view, I was doomed to spend my waning days lying in a bed with a typewriter by my side or to slip away before I had a chance to ruin my own life or climb my own mountains.

The folks at Stanford waved their specialist arms and sent those prognosticators scattering to the winds and waves.  I embarked on a three-year high, which only recently seems to have plateaued.

But I’m still kicking.

What business do I have, surrendering to this nasty bug which rides my DNA with unbridled glee?  I scroll through social media studying the faces of the 59 killed in Las Vegas, the 49 slaughtered in Orlando, the fourteen killed in San Bernadino.  I find a picture of Gabby Giffords and memorize the contours of her cheek and the sweep of her hair.   I look for photographs of the six who died that day, cut down by the same sweep of bullets.   Further back:  Columbine, Laramie.  I read the articles about the rise of police killings in the last two years; horrifying descriptions of service members dying on foreign soil as they have died for decades; stark accounts of  police officers ambushed at New York intersections and on the streets of Dallas.

I hear my voice echo through the house:  Get up, get out, get going.  Reject your body’s betrayal, because you have been allowed to live when so many have fallen in pools of their own blood, crimson pools seeping out to merge with the blood of other angels.

Yesterday a few of my more annoying symptoms interrupted the progress of my housework and the enjoyment of an evening’s concert.  But this morning, my mood has improved regardless of the ache, the rumble, the searing stabs of erratic neurons.  Fortune, or blessings, or dumb luck — that which has driven  me to pull myself from each cold concrete floor onto which I have crashed —  settles on my shoulders and scolds me: You’re still here.  Keep walking.  No complaining.

Four years ago today, my mother-in-law Joanna MacLaughlin slipped away, with her children and her husband holding her hand and whispering words of devotion and acceptance.  I stood behind my favorite curmudgeon, my own hands on his back.  A wave of  love emanated through him washing over me.  Whatever else might be true about my life, about my body’s weaknesses and my mind’s shortcomings, that I have been honored to know some fine people must also be noted.  Rest in peace, Joanna.  Your uncomplaining nature still inspires me.

It’s the eighth day of the forty-sixth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Joanna MacLaughlin and my favorite curmudgeon, Jay MacLaughlin