A flight of uncarpeted stairs

"Life in itself is nothing," wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay, "a flight of uncarpeted stairs."

My step-mother continues to descend that staircase. Today, she's belligerent. On oxygen. The nurse upped the dosage and frequency of the morphine that we're giving her. Her daughter, my step-sister, is doing her best to clear her calendar at work and get down here. I'm trying to track down my old college friend who became a priest to stop by and administer last rites. (It's impossible to track down a priest. Calling the archdiocesan office is fruitless. They act like your serving a subpoena, which is what they're probably used to. And doing a google search means you have to slog through all of these hits relating to clergy abusing children. It must be tough to be a Catholic these days.)

Anyway, I don't wanna tie up the line.

---