Crisis on the Interstate

Newsletter 2020-06-08

My wife's grandma recently entered home hospice care. Not the most uplifting way to start a comedy newsletter, but death is a part of life. Except for me. I’m definitely going to live forever. Since we have limited opportunities left to visit Lola’s grandma, we made the trip to see her this weekend. That’s always a dicey proposition at the tail end of a quarantine, but almost everyone else in Lola’s immediate family had already made the pilgrimage and we didn’t want to be the only ones who didn’t. My Catholic upbringing is rubbing off on Lola. Our most important family decisions are driven by guilt.

Lola called her grandma Friday night to tell her we were coming. After Lola hung up, her grandmother immediately called her back to issue a dire warning. No, it wasn’t about her own health. She’s in her eighties, and, after a twenty-year battle with cancer, is pretty well at peace with the world and her place in it. Instead, her words of caution were about something much more urgent: bathro…