Death and Taxes

This isn’t some doom and gloom foretelling of the future, nor is it a missive from the mind of a depressive. It is merely an observation, and some desires of mine. And it may not be pleasant.

Death

It’s gonna happen. It happens to everyone. As I saw on a television show the other night, everyone has temporary immortality, it’s called life. It was funnier when the cast said it. But I think about these things. Yes, partly because I am an untreated depressive. How much that colors the rest of my thoughts, I honestly don’t know. I’ve only ever tried one anti-depressant, and I wound up getting almost no sleep, even though I took it first thing in the morning. It helped my mood, but I was exhausted. Ah the joys of ADD and the paradoxical reactions. One of the other reasons, what I think is the primary reason, I think of death a lot is the fact that I’m sick. I have Polycystic Kidney Disease. I have kidneys the size of toddlers, that each weigh the same as a small bowling ball. They’re supposed to be about the size of a fist and weigh a quarter pound. And it hurts. Always. To some degree, I’m in pain. Some days it’s worse than others. Some days, I am merely uncomfortable, others I need to take something just to sit up. There are nights I can’t sleep because of the pain and discomfort. And clothes…that’s a tough one to handle. I always had an hourglass figure. Even when I was over 240 lbs, I had an hourglass figure. I had muscle tone. Clothes looked good on me. Not any more. As my kidneys grow, I think more and more that I’ll be shopping in the maternity aisles for my pants. I’ll have to.

After watching my mother, and her mother before her, suffer from diseases that took their lives long before they died, I wondered. My grandmother died from things she’d done to herself. She was a smoker. Of course, at the time she started, doctors were saying it’s good for you, so I honestly don’t believe it’s her fault. If I had gotten emphysema, it would have been. By the time I started smoking, we knew the hazards. I would have no excuse. Anyway, I watched them both waste away. And the reality is, that could happen to me. It’s more likely to happen to me than to anyone else in my immediate family. I don’t know what my current kidney function is, I haven’t had health insurance since November of last year. I haven’t taken my blood pressure pills since about April. And even then, I was only taking them occasionally. Can’t afford them. As of February 2007, my function was estimated at about 65%, but that was before my annual pee-in-a-cup day. I have to collect my urine for 24 hours and let them take about 3 quarts of blood. Might be only half a pint, I usually don’t pay attention once they put the needle in. That’s the test that tells my function. I’m exhausted all the time, and as mentioned, always in some degree of pain. I could live like this for another 30 years, or I could go south in just 5. No real way to know. So I think about it. That’s the background out of the way.

What do I want? I have no children, no boyfriend or husband to mourn me, I have very few assets, no foundations are relying on my presence to make them run, and there are a lot of times I feel like a part of my immediate family wouldn’t really miss me for long. Basically, I feel completely expendable. So I don’t want a grave. No point, really. Who would visit? I wouldn’t , I’d be dead. My friends wouldn’t, they’d be too far away. If I were buried anywhere, I’d want to be buried in Cincinnati. But I don’t want to be buried. Besides, I am an organ donor. Not many organs anyone would be able to use, unfortunately, but maybe a medical school could have a field day with my kidneys and other cyst-covered organs. There’s plenty of them. After that, I want to be cremated. Have a funeral if you want. I’d prefer a Presbyterian funeral, but I won’t be there, so it’s up to whoever’s stuck planning it. Again, I have very few assets, so it won’t exactly be elaborate. Enjoy. Try to remember the happy times. If you can’t, then just sit around with the uncomfortable silence of everyone going “Wow, we really did hate her.”

Taxes

I have no earned income this year. There are still five months left in the year, and if I don’t want to go into foreclosure, there will have to be a job somewhere in there, but until that happens, I have no earned income. The bulk of my money comes from a student loan, an insurance settlement and a pension plan, on which I HAVE paid taxes, and unemployment, on which I paid partial taxes. I suppose I’m lucky I decided to take a tax accounting class this quarter. The whole issue of insurance settlements is actually covered. But I’m not looking forward to doing my taxes for this year. Might be a bit of a challenge, that. I’m up to it.

Aside from that, taking my tax accounting class has reinforced even more that I don’t want to be a CPA. I want to be a Fraud Examiner, an auditor, a Forensic Accountant, something not dealing directly with doing someone’s taxes. It’s boring to me. The research is interesting, but I’ve found so far that I can get lost in the research, a particularly valuable trait in the other three paths I mentioned. The other three closely-related paths.

Really, that’s all I have to say on taxes. I just put it in there because the title worked so well, I had to write something. It’s a little lighter, anyway. And yet…I wonder about my own future. Will I be healthy enough to realize my goal? I don’t know. But, even though I’m depressed, I’m also an optimist. That’s why I’m going to school. I could die tomorrow, I could get bedridden, or I could have another 30 years of being a fully-functioning part of society. I’m planning for the last.