The Desert Independent

Dr. Glenn Mollette A good friend died recently. At the age of 80 all his life insurance had expired and his savings was spent. His family, financially, were living from week to week. His failing health along with Covid-19 put him in an Intensive Care Unit for days apart from his family where he died. His hospitalization brought more bills and financial hardship for those left behind. Needless to say, there wasn't any money to pay for a casket, embalming, plot of ground and a grave marker.

His young adult son put together their dire scenario and sent it out to everyone his family knew. Within a week 103 friends had given $20,300 to momentarily rescue this family from their perilous situation. It was enough money to buy a casket, embalming, a plot of ground and a small grave memorial marker.

Do you have 103 friends who would give $20 to $2000 each to pay for your burial expenses? I know I do not. Such an outpouring was a testimony to his life and the lives of so many he had touched. This story is a sad reminder that we must take prudent steps toward covering our burial/funeral costs.

I don't want my wife or children to have to figure it out after I'm dead. Often, we don't get a choice. We die way before we have time to make our final arrangements. This happens a lot. This is why we need to do it now or as soon as we can.

Another dear friend recently died very young. Her family was strapped for cash and went the rout of cremation. Cremation is costing between $2500 to $7500 depending on where you live. Not cheap. My Navy son said, "Dad, just cremate me and scatter my remains over the north Atlantic." I pray he lives to be a hundred and his grandchildren have to do that.

Some of you know my wife died back in 2002. Her funeral cost me about $10,000 and her grave plot was $600. I was cash strapped at the age of 47. I had nothing but medical bills and a house payment. I wasn't prepared for a funeral, mentally or financially. The only thing that saved me was a year before she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a good friend sold us small life insurance policies. He also talked us into paying extra for a disability wavier on the policy. The disability wavier was the only way I was able to maintain that life insurance policy which we used 13 years after he sold it to us. It was the only way I could have paid for that funeral, unless I could have borrowed more money on my house. This was doubtful because I already had a second mortgage on the house from trying to pay other medical bills. I would have been hurting and probably would have had to go the cheapest route available for her funeral. It was simply the grace of God and a wise insurance agent who saved us in that respect. MORE

Shoe’n Horses & Nam’n Pills

Home Country
Fiction by SLIM RANDLES
To The Desert Independent

February 24, 2021

Nature hates a vacuum, and so does Windy Wilson. The other day, emerging from the drug store, he looked around, and, finding no handy audience, spoke instead to the world.

“Dad-gum ol’ Doc, anyway,” he said. “He’s one-a my bestest pals, but if you go to him for a mizz-ry, he makes you do some things and quit doin’ some other things. Them things Doc wants you to do you don’t wanna do, and the things he wants you to quit doin’ are stuff you bin savin’ up to do a buncha years now.

“Now ol’ Doc didn’t even know he done it, but he proved to me that we had some a-them space alienated bein’s for ancestors. Oh, they’s hidin’ out now, but they got a job … as pill namers!

“Doc told me to quit shoein’ horses, which was jest fine with me. Missable back-breakin’ nasty work, anyway. But then he give me two subscriptions for pills that I am ‘sposed to take for my mizz-ry.

“And when the nice girl here at the drugstore give ‘em to me, she asked me if I had any questions about ‘em. And I ast her how to say the pill names. And she told me, and thass when I knew.

“Ya see, ya can’t jest name them pills in American. Oh no. First off ya gotta give ‘em a name that’s too much and a half too long … like oh … syna-broliam-fester-ine.

“We should take pill namin’ back from them alien guys and create jobs fer Americans! Give them pills names people can actual say.

“It wouldn’t be too awful dang hard to remember a pill for pain if you called it

Mizzryfixer, now would it? And for a hangover cure, ya jest pop ya a happy little pill called Betcha-wish-ya-hadn’t. If ya come down with the sugar diabeets, ol’ Doc could tell ya to bullsnake down some pills we could call Too-sweet-by-half-odone. Now, for a instance, if you get plagiarized by them roamin’ ‘round peewaddles, you could take a pill called Limp-be-gone, or mebbe-so Gimpy-blocker, and you’d know jest what it was for, wouldn’t ya? MORE