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I know this old lady, have known her for years. In her middle age, she used to regularly make the promise that when "her time was done" she'd head to Alaska and walk into the snow like the Inuits expect their old folks to do (or what she believed the Inuits do).

This was repeated to the point of tiresomeness. It was basically a demonstration for attn and self-pity.

Now she's truly old and requires a wheelchair and assistants--but she's now also truly rich. She flies First Class to Scott and White twice every year to go through a week of tests to monitor every little function to the nth degree, she counsels with a team of doctors and frets over all the smallest details. She has many chronic problems, and gathers a few more every year. Then she flies home to Vegas, and her life consists of watching nightclub shows and periodically making her family miserable with all her worries over her failing health and general disappointment with life and the people therein. She has no real relationship with any other human being, since she managed to get most of what would have been her grandchildren aborted, and alienated the grandchildren who survived.

People say one thing, and mean another. When you say, "I wouldn't want to live like that"-- be sure to write it down, so that your grateful relations can send you to Alaska.