Few things scare most humans like the prospect of living, dying alone

By David McElroy · February 5, 2019

I never met Jimmy Grammer. As far as I know, we were never even in the same place at the same time. But I find myself wondering tonight who this man was.

This was his driver’s license photo, but I can’t say he looked very happy when it was taken. Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe the camera operator pushed the button before he was ready. We’ll never now.

Jimmy Grammer was found dead last Tuesday at the age of 70 — in the cheap motel in a seedy part of town where he had lived since 2011. As far as anyone knows, he had no family.

Motel employees hadn’t seen him in a few days, according to the newspaper account, so someone went to check on him and found him dead in his bed.

Every time I see a story such as this one, I feel a shiver of dread. I look into the eyes of the dead man or woman and I wonder how this person ended up so alone in life. But it’s not just empathy for strangers, of course. Their deaths scare me.

These people who die alone with no families represent my worst nightmare. It’s hard for me to imagine anything worse than dying alone with no loving family to care about me. That possibility terrifies me.

I assume Jimmy Grammer wasn’t always alone. Although his parents are probably long dead, he might have had siblings. Maybe he still does. Maybe he was once married. Someone must have loved him very much at one time. Maybe he had children.

Surely someone loved him. At some point.

How did he lose the love and companionship of those who once might have held his hand and called him family? How did he end up poor and alone in a cheap motel?

Most of us start our lives believing we had success and love ahead of us. Almost everybody is optimistic when he’s young. Jimmy Grammer was born just after World War II and he grew up in a booming economy, so I would think he had plenty of reason to have hope for himself.

He probably dreamed of success. He might have imagined he could get rich. Maybe he even made a lot of money and lived in a fine house at one time. And he must have felt love and known close companionship along the way.

I’ll never know Grammer’s story. I’ll never know the details of any of these people whose pictures I periodically see in the newspaper. I just know the coroner’s office is looking for family or friends or — well, anybody — who knew these people. They need someone to claim the bodies.

And I can’t help feeling a tinge of fear for myself, because I don’t want to end up like these people.

I do not want to die in my bed alone.

I do not want to die without love.

I do not want to die in a cheap motel in a miserable place.

I do not want to die without a fortune to give to people I love.

Yes, this fear is about me, not about Jimmy Grammer. Every death such as his sends a shudder down my spine — and it feels like a whispered voice in my heart warning me not to live in such a way that I’ll end up alone and unloved.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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