I’m not afraid of dying alone.
If you’ve followed this blog, you might be thinking, “Lils, that’s easy for you to say. You’re not really alone. You’re in a living-apart-together relationship. You’ll have someone there when you get old.”
But the truth is, that’s probably not going to be the case. Given the significant age difference between my partner and I, it’s likely I’ll spend the last decade or more of my life alone.
But this honestly doesn’t scare me. And I’ll tell you why.
But before that, I want to give you some honest tea: Writing a blog series on spinster death was hard. Not because I had to face my own mortality (I already had my advance directive and burial plan). But because I had to face the fact that I might actually end up dying alone. Not alone as in, “All my friends are dead,” but alone as in, “My friends are still alive and no one wants to be there for me.”
Who Will Take Care of Me When I’m Old?
When I made my advance directive, I asked my LAT partner if I could name him as my healthcare proxy. He said he was uncomfortable with that. He didn’t want to be the one to “pull the plug.” That was reasonable, so I turned to the next person I trusted most.
My best friend is two years younger than I am and in good health, so she had a reasonable chance of outliving me. But her beliefs about end-of-life care don’t always sync with mine, and I had some reservations about how ethical it would be to ask anyone, even my bff, to do something (i.e., pulling the plug) that might violate her own ethics.
I could have asked my grandmother, and I believe she would have accepted. She would definitely have followed my wishes. She and my late grandfather both wrote living wills to ensure they’d have natural deaths. And, when my grandfather became terminally ill, she defended his right to die at home when he could no longer advocate for himself.
But the odds of my grandmother outliving me were low. Besides, she’d already had to do that for my grandfather. Wouldn’t it be pretty rough to have to argue with doctors to allow her young granddaughter to die? I didn’t ask her. It seemed wrong.
Honestly, realizing I had no close friends or family willing to do this for me made me feel very lonely. For a few, brief moments I wondered if all the dire warnings about dying alone might have been legit. It was a pretty tender spot for a bit, and I wondered how (or if) I’d address it when it came time to write this series. Would I have to admit that, after all, this lifestyle could mean dying alone and unloved?
Married Couples Fear the Reaper, Too
It didn’t take me too long to realize that, in fact, this was not a spinster problem. Few people, at least few Americans, are comfortable with death. It’s especially weird for a younger person in good health to fill out an advanced directive. I asked myself, if my S/O and I had been married, would he have been any more comfortable accepting that?
Answer: Of course not. Getting married doesn’t suddenly make you chill with Death and the thought of losing a loved one. After thinking about it, I realized the only reason this process is different as a single is because you actually have to sit down and talk about it.
If my S/O and I were married, he’d have automatic power of attorney. But he’d still feel uncomfortable in that role.
Realizing that made me feel less alone and unloved. Death makes people uncomfortable. Handling medical issues for a sick and unconscious person is uncomfortable. And being tasked with pulling the plug is, for most people, really uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, it left me with an important question: What will keep me from dying alone?
But Seriously, Who’s Going to Take Care of Me?
Let me quickly say that at no point did getting pregnant, having a baby, and binding that child to me through filial obligation and guilt in order to coerce them into performing these tasks for me seem like a good way to avoid dying alone.
For the time being, I’ve named my dad as my healthcare proxy. As I’m only 32 and in pretty good health, it’s unlikely he’ll have to fulfill that role. In the future, I’ll likely update it. At the moment, I don’t know who my new health care agent will be. But I feel better with that uncertainty that I’d feel as a mother wondering if I could count on my kids to care for me. Wondering if they would respect my wishes, or if I would, like so very many mothers, end up abandoned in an assisted living facility or left to slowly die alone in hospice.
Why This Spinster Doesn’t Fear the Reaper
(Or, the reasons I’m not afraid of dying alone alone)
First, I’m not afraid of languishing in a nursing home, neglected by underpaid and frustrated staff.
I’m laying money aside for my own care in my later years. I’ve got a living will, and I’ll continue to update it as I age and my life circumstances change. Instead of paying some $235,000 (or whatever the current cost of raising a kid, sans college, is) on raising a child, I’ll put that toward my end-of life care.
Again, it goes without saying that none of us knows the future, and even the best-laid plans can go awry. But that’s true for everyone, not just single people. I have seen too many people of moderate means with large families propped in a corner of a senior center, forgotten by the outside world to believe that I’d be immune to these troubles if I weren’t single.
Second, I’m not afraid of being alone.
I don’t see myself as being so unlovable that I won’t have any friends. I talked about hiring a death doula in the last post, which is yet another reason I’m not worried about what will happen if all my friends and family die before me.
Third, I’ve prepared.
You might think it’s tacky of me to talk even more about money, but you can’t have an honest discussion about death without addressing this issue.
Our grandmothers learned the importance of financial independence within a marriage, so they would never be left stranded should their husbands leave. They held part-time jobs and kept their nest eggs. Our mothers learned the importance of having a good-paying job before (and often during) marriage. And we’ve learned the importance of truly standing on our own two feet. Equal to—not dependent on—a partner.
As long as we live in a world that runs on money, finances are vital to self-reliance. Feeling too ashamed to save up for yourself just makes you a burden to someone else later. Taking charge of your own finances, career, life, and death is empowering.
Why I Made This Series
It’s not because I fear death that I make plans for it. This is hard for me to explain to some people. Some of my friends insist that I’m worried about dying, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. I think they’re worried about death because they refuse to look at it.
Planning for death isn’t like planning for a worst case scenario. You’re going to die. Avoiding death preparation is like knowing that you have a conference in another state and refusing to get a plane ticket, pack your clothes, or make arrangements for your pets. The person who does all of these things in advance isn’t worried; they’re just sensible.
Don’t worry about dying alone. Do future-you a favor and make arranges for your own end-of-life care today.
