Inevitable

…..she knew that time was growing short for him, yet she didn’t speak of it. He had so many years under his belt that the end could come at any time–suddenly, unexpectedly, without any hint or advance notice.  Yet how unexpected is it when an eighty-five-year who is in ostensibly good health succumbs to the inevitability of old age?  How genuinely unexpected can that be??  Mortality is a hard and fast law of humankind, and as one tests its outer limits nobody escapes its clutches regardless of how stellar their overall health has been previously…..even minutes or seconds earlier.  She understood that the concepts of “good health” and “unexpected death” among the octogenarian population were intrinsically foolish and the epitome of wishful thinking, and thus she sighed and braced herself for the inevitable phone call she knew–when measured against the spectrum of a full lifetime–would now be coming much sooner as opposed to later …..