My Jewish mother is obsessed with making sure I kill her.

My Jewish mother is obsessed with making sure I kill her.

To be fair, she did have to live through two extremely stressful and drawn-out death situations in her lifetime: the deaths of my grandmother and great-grandmother, both of whom lived five years too long and became toothless, blind, money-sucking zombies.

My great-grandmother in particular was a real card. She used to have this quirky saying that went: “ARE YOU MY GRAAAANDSON??”

Those are the last words I ever remember my great-grandmother speaking – and to make matters worse, she was addressing a high school friend of mine who had never met her before.

This friend and I had taken a trip down to Florida in order to get properly high and stare at the beach. It was to be a psychedelic, Auldus Aldous [thanks, The Invincible Godmonster] Huxley-type excursion, but since my parents had paid for the plane tickets, we were obliged to visit my vegetable grandmother at least once during our trip.

My great-grandmother lived in a big luxury apartment building on the western seaside, but she could have lived on 158th street or the Taj Mahal and it would have all been the same to her. Not withstanding her drooling indifference, our family felt morally obliged to do the “right thing,” and continued to shell out thousands of dollars a month so that my great-grandmother could live in her luxury apartment under round-the-clock personal nursing care. (Our family still had money back then and like MC Hammer, they thought it would last forever.)

On that particular trip, my friend and I ventured into my great-grandmother’s apartment building while we were tripping pretty heavily on mushrooms. No, we couldn’t just have “skipped shrooms that day” or “dosed later on” — time was of the essence.

Her apartment building was a Jewish Florida standard – the shiny waxed lobby, the gift shop, the elevators with heat-sensitive buttons that these old crones’ wrinkled white fingers could still activate … Tripping our balls off, it felt like where Willy Wonka would send his dying parents, except instead of oompa loompas they used southern Blacks.

Yep, while the old white alter kockers sat upstairs dying, the southern Blacks ran the place, shining the lobby, stocking the gift shop, polishing shit, and smiling like bojangles.

WELL, we got in the elevator peaking on shrooms, and I showed my boy how I could BLOW on the elevator button and make it light up – a trick my parents had taught me when I was 4. (It’s always remarkable when you’re a Wizard on acid, doing something your parents taught you — “sure, my parents taught me how to wipe my ass like this, but they could never understand what it reeeeally meant.”)

We got to her hallway and walked down the vacuumed carpets – the whole place had the deep odor of mothballs and lysol. Each door had shiny metal doorknobs and knockers; glowing lines of plastic doorbells led to a single window at the long end of the hallway.

After trying to get our shit together outside her apartment, we finally knocked on the door. Her gigantic black nurse let us in, and walked us to the back room where my great-grandmother was. When I replay this story in my head, I keep having to tell myself that it wasn’t our fault we walked in on her – the nurse had invited us in.

It’s obvious that my grandmother didn’t know we were coming to see her (or where she was or who we were or who SHE was) because she just wasn’t ready. She didn’t have her teeth in, and didn’t have her wig or her nightgown on properly.

My friend and I, tripping balls, walked in on a wrinkled and fuzzy, blind, beige Yoda. She flailed her neck backwards, pointed her toothless rubber-lipped gob at my homie and screamed,

“ARE YOU MY GRAAAAANDSON?”

Of course my friend dropped his luggage, looked up at the camera, and as the shot tracked back and back and back to show the room, then the building, then the city/state/planet/whole universe like someone was hitting ctrl-minus on google maps – he shouted:

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

He was not her grandson. I was lucky too – I was ONLY her grandson – not my chair, not my problem.

It’s when you’re the SON that you’re fucked:

See, my mom doesn’t want to go out like that. She doesn’t want to live too long, and she’s obsessed with making it clear that it’s my job to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Here’s the deal though – forget shooting your mom in the head with a pistol – I mean, you can see how a jury might misinterpret THAT- but in 21st century America, what’s the right way to help your parents die?

Think you could do it? So did this guy:

Look at this poor hero: he gave his dying dad a pistol as a side-order to go with his Dignity. Didn’t do shit but bring his old man a gun, and now he’s going to jail for three years.

I showed this to my cousin, a lawyer, and he said:

“Yep, see? You can’t go there – that shit is ASSISTED SUICIDE.”

I said man, get the fuck outta here, you can’t even BRiNG them a pistol? Isn’t that fucked up!?

He said: “Three words: DOC TER Kavorkian. And NO, it’s not fucked up.”

How anyone could disagree with me on this, I’m not sure, but let me tell you my cousin’s argument:

(I’ll tell you the sane part of his point at least – he happens to be EXTRA Jewish so, he also believes that only G-D can decide when it’s time for a human life to end. If you believe that shit then I don’t even know what to tell you. I told my cousin, “Fool, God DID decide he wanted this nigga’s life to end – he gave the nigga cancer!”)

The sane part of his argument was this:

“Can you at least see WHY it’s a slippery slope? Because people can start saying that they were just assisting the suicides of their old parents whose inheritances they wanted to speed up? Not to mention niggas saying they were assisting the suicides of central park west mothafuckas whose apartments they robbed?”

I get it, and it still makes no sense – set up a panel then nigga – there’s your death panel right there! The Government has plenty of other committees whose job it is to figure out very difficult personal shit by crawling up citizens’ asses:

-Greencard approval to see if niggas are REALLY in love when they get married or just trying to steal citizenship and healthcare

-Child welfare boards to see if niggas should have their kids TAKEN AWAY from them – I mean, what’s more intense and personal than that?? Come to your house and sit there sipping a cup of your coffee, waiting to see if you lose your temper with your son when he takes a dump on your laptop?

So isn’t it time at the very least, for a government board you can apply to in order to end your own life?

“Honorable members of the Department of Elderly Dignity,

Please niggas, I got ball cancer and it’s spread to my lymph nodes. Sometimes I forget who my grandson is and my balls hurt. I had a great life, but now I can’t tell the difference between Florida and Harlem. Please lemme die?”

What’s the downside on that one? Just that The Invisible Godmonster won’t like it?

Boogity-boogity-boogity!!!

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