Frenchie, I agree w/your mother. The leading cause of death...is living. Aside from that... my mother used to say "Loneliness is the worst disease of all."
My brother used to say: "Ya gotta be smarter than what you're workin with."
My husband used to say: "Everything's got a shelf life whether you use it or not."
My kids say: "No meant no & maybe meant yes."
What my friends will remember me say is: "I've been to more funerals than weddings in my life." For the record, I now skip both whenever possible.
My doctor said: "We all want to go in our sleep, but we don't get to choose."
To Rasputin's post I can simply reply:
My father passed away from heart disease when I was 6, he was 48 I think. Two adult brothers passed from the same. The first began his heart troubles around 40. His goal was to make it 6 mos longer than my dad. What a goal than is to have. He did not make his goal & died @ age 47 living the time bomb of angina, procedures, surgeries, nitroglycerin in your pocket & when was the fatal heart attack on the horizon...today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. The second brother had just retired & collected his first Social Security check & was preparing the RV for a cross country trip when a massive heart attack took him right next to the RV. I had either just spoken to or been w/both brothers shortly before their deaths...within days. My mother had cancer @ 86, followed by stroke, congestive heart failure. The stroke took her ability to speak, left her w/dementia, robbed her of her memory. It is cruel. I could only hope that along w/her memory loss resulting in the inability to perform activities of daily living, that she also lost some of the pain. 9 years I took care of her in my home along w/my husband. There are many diseases I hate.
I have since lost a husband, mother, stepson. We all have our stories to tell, certainly not to detract from anyone's, simply, the longer we live, the longer our book becomes.
Most things I learned from my mother, some from my kids, brothers, friends. The point is we learn, remember, reflect, use & find meaning during our stay on this planet. So when I'm trying to figure out something that should be simple I think: "Ya gotta be smarter than what you're workin with." When something I've hardly used goes to s**t I think: "Everything's got a shelf life whether you use it or not." When it's life in general, it's my beloved mother...who also used to say: "I'll knock you into the middle of next week."
BS
