Eenie meenie miney mo

I am aware that one of us will go first. The good money is on one of my parents. They are both retired and though one's sixties seems premature, my mother remarks that she was not too interested in reaching eighty.

I pick my father up from the dealership, where my mother's car is getting repaired. The brakes sound like a mechanical elephant dying, which is not one brakes should make. We got to talking about vacation, on which my mother is bringing her three dogs, which transitioned into talking about the dogs themselves, then her rotating menagerie in general.

My father does not feel he could care for all the animals should my mother die. I have had similar conversations. On a walk to ice cream earlier in the week, Amber asked how old Sky, my mother's ring-necked parakeet, is. I estimated he must be twenty-five, and they live between thirty and fifty years in captivity. We did not say we might have to take that bird if both my parents died, but we thought it all but audibly.

A cedar chest in my home contains my important papers, including my parents' will (they have one for both of them; efficiency). I do not look at it, but I know it is there. I read over its legalese once. The animals are not mentioned. However, if they both died, who would the animals go to? The brother in Texas? The grouchy bachelor with the nurturing instincts of a mantis? Or me, whose spouse is a vet tech soon to pursue a doctorate in biomolecular engineering, who has, to varying levels of success, had three cats, five rats, three hamsters, six mice, and two beta fish?

Amber and I joke that my parents are not allowed to die ever, but especially because dealing with their zoo containing mammals, reptiles, birds, and an amphibian would be a significant inconvenience.

But it may not be my parent who goes first. Bryan and I both work in the correctional system. I've had more death threats than most people, though I do not think the residents mean them usually. I cannot think of any boy who would do more than give me too aggressive a handshake if they saw me on the outside -- and most of them will not have this opportunity before 2050. Still, they are not known for their stability, which accounts for most of the murders they have done. I don't think murder is my likeliest end, but it is more elevated than for most of the population. Most people you walk past on a given day have not had a gang hit taken out on them for giving the big homie a 55 on his report card.

Bryan deals with the adults as a psych nurse practitioner and could have earned the ire of some unhinged person who resented my brother standing in the way of drug-seeking behavior. Again, not likely, but not outside the realm of possibility.

As for Dan, he would probably not be the victim of murder, but he does live in Texas. You can't be sure there. His neighbors are a gun-happy people. He travels often for work and pleasure, increasing the possibility of a mode of transport going amiss. He does hardcore exercise, skewing him toward embolism or heart attack. But one can spin out of control here. He has a pool, so should one include drowning? He has enjoyed a drink or smoke, so should one toss in an overdose? It can extend to the point of nonsense quickly.

On a long enough timeframe, one of us will be the first.

I write this on the anniversary of Melissa's death, which social media keeps reminding me. "Do you want to plan something for Melissa's birthday?" Probably not, calendar. I don't think she is up for a surprise party. What does one even get a box of buried ashes?

She used to celebrate a few days before her birthday since that was her sobriety date. It was only her sobriety from cocaine, though, which she considered her most lethal vice. (For fairness, she tried heroin over a decade before her death and said she could not use it again since it felt so good she would do it until she killed her. At least she knew the score, though the Sackler family knew they would be the winners.)

Melissa's family would not have been startled that she was the first of them to go. She was a drug user more of her life than she was not, probably by a factor of three. Vegas odds-makers would have put her in the ground at least a decade before her cremation.

In an actuarial sense, what would the respective guesses in my family be? And whose death would be the least inconvenient for the rest?

For the latter question, it would be Bryan. He doesn't own any significant property and is not dating anyone. We could have his affairs wrapped up in a season. I have Amber, Dan has a brood and wife thousands of miles away, and our parents have property and pets. It doesn't make him the most likely to die, just the least obnoxious.

Insurance agencies would check off boxes. I exercise daily, but I am also mentally ill and have what would be classed as a high-stress job (it isn't; I mostly sit in front of my computer writing novels). My risk of suicidality is higher than my brothers' -- though I will not kill myself, as I have too much I need to write and take too much pleasure in it. My parents are past the point of suicide; if they were going to kill themselves, they wouldn't have made it to the sixties. Bryan sometimes tends toward a subdued rage outside the company of his long-distance friends, which is hard on the heart. I do not know how physically fit he is, but it is a fair bet he is less than Dan or me.

But it isn't worth parsing this all out, adding and subtracting, because life doesn't give guarantees or obey likelihoods. A meteor could fall from the clear blue and end me as I scribble a story. I can never know, but I can reliably assume it would be a pain in the ass for the survivors.

last watched: True Blood
reading: The View from the Cheap Seats