With age comes inadequacy. With inadequacy comes resignation. With resignation comes death.

The old man thought about this over breakfast. A nurse had visited him the other day for a weekly check-up. She had explained the so-called "5 Stages of Grief" people supposedly experience before dying to him. All he could remember was that the last stage was "acceptance".

This bothered him. He was not of a generation known for "acceptance". When his teeth had turned rotten, he hadn't accepted living with rotten teeth, had he? He'd gotten dentures instead. What about when his son tried to shoo him away into that home? He'd turned him down, settling instead for those damned weekly visitations that he was already regretting.

The old man bit into his toast with a crunchy sense of determination.

Those goddamn nurses, those women, those witches. The last one had brought a priest with her.

What was it the sunuvabitch had said? "Death is nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Griffith. It is merely the first step of a journey."

Mr. Griffith had felt this was the creamiest crock of shit he'd ever heard and he'd had no qualms about being vocal with his opinion after that, taking care to use great and explicit detail. When he'd finished the priest had just stood there looking sort of stunned for a moment. At the very end, when the nurse was already pulling Mr. Griffith inside, he looked as though he might say something in response but whatever it was, he failed to say it fast enough to avoid being cut off by Mr. Griffith's front door. This was, he supposed, what had touched off the nurse's lecture on the "stages of grief".

"You're in denial, Mr. Griffith. You're getting old, you're going to die, you have to recognize that"

She had then proceeded to outline the four remaining stages for him, from anger to acceptance. When she finally finished, he had sat silently for a moment.

"You're telling me these five stages are a good thing, Miss?"

"Yes, Mr. Griffith. They're essential for coming to terms with your own mortality."

"And my mortality is a good thing?"

"Dying is an essential part of life" she'd responded robotically.

"And why the hell is that? Why can't I live forever?"

"That's what heaven is for."

"I don't want to go to heaven," Mr. Griffith declared, "I want to live forever on Earth. Tell me why I can't do that."

The nurse had given him a strange look.

"Because it's unnatural."

He'd stood up angrily then, and jabbed an accusing finger into the woman's chest.

"Who the fuck are you to tell me what is and isn't unnatural? I've spent my whole goddamn life not dying and it's always seemed like the right thing to me!"

"You don't think dying would be to your benefit?" she'd asked.

"No! I don't! Because I'd be DEAD!"

"What about your children's?" she'd said, in a slightly quieter voice this time.

"Are you telling me my children would be better off with me dead? Is that what you're saying?"

"Well, you have to realize that continuing to care for you-"

"I NEVER ASKED FOR THEIR CARE OR YOUR CARE OR ANYBODY ELSE'S CARE!" he'd shouted angrily.

"Well, I'm very sorry you feel that way, Mr. Griff-" she'd begun.

"Get out of my house."

"But-"

"Out."

And she'd packed up and left without another word. He'd gotten a call from his son later that afternoon about it, which he had happily ignored.

Two days later, he picked over his eggs and regretted his harshness somewhat. He couldn't blame them for not living life as he had. They'd never stormed a foreign beach in a hail of bullets or seen a man burn alive. They'd never met a child with bones so weak they broke in your arms.

They knew the greater good, but not God, because they'd never come close enough to the edge of life to see Him up close. They knew the greater good only as Marx and Hitler had, where it existed only as an abstract idea of unity and productivity that bound everyone. They saw the selfless but not the self and there was where they lost the point of being altogether, he decided.

Death was just another form of selflessness to them. It did not matter that he was destroyed by it. It was for the "greater good". They forgot the greatest goods, he thought.

Mr. Griffith finished his coffee. He spooned out a bit of the sugary slurry on the bottom and tasted it. This was a greatest good.

He got up and put his dishes in the sink where he washed them, reveling in the feeling of warm water on his hands. This was a greatest good.

The warm water made him pine for a cold shower, so he took one. When he was done, he walked out to the living room window and pulled back the curtain, so the sun could warm his chest. This was a greatest good.

He got dressed and recounted the pleasures of warm, dry clothes. This was a greatest good.

He checked the calender and saw that his granddaughter was visiting today. This was a greatest good.

Mr. Griffith sat down and winced at a sudden pain in his back. He was not naive; he knew his body would not last forever. But for these small pleasures he would lie to himself for as long as he needed to. And when his daughter arrived this afternoon, he would tell her all the wonderful things she would have in this life. She would learn that life is good and that good is life.

If this was denial, he thought, then denial would serve for another day.