Humor: The Onion Spoofs Midlife Crises with Satirical "End-Life" Crisis Story

For those of you not familiar with "The Onion," it is one of the funniest humor publications on the market. It is a parody of a small town newspaper and satires current events. This time The Onion is taking on midlife crises with a story about a 74-year old man's acute "end-life" crisis. It is hilarious. Excerpts:

Ever since his retirement nearly a decade ago, area resident Oscar Subitzky just hasn't been the same. What began as a single, uncharacteristic extravagance—the payment of $15,000 for a coronary angioplasty to expand his narrowing arterial wall—has given way to a growing number of personal luxuries, from the latest brand-name heart medications to the most advanced palliative care.

"Sure, the operation seemed a little indulgent at first, but we could tell it was really important to Dad, so we didn't try to stop him from having it," said daughter Martha Welsch, 46, who can still remember when her father didn't need "pricey doodads" like defibrillators and cardiopulmonary-resuscitation devices to be content. "We all thought this was going to be a one-time thing, that it was just something Dad had to get out of his system, and then things would go back to normal," she said.

Subitzky's end-life crisis began when he suddenly left a secure job as an accountant at the age of 65. Welsch admitted she didn't quite understand what had come over Subitzky until he announced six months after his retirement that he had started seeing a cardiologist nearly half his age.

According to psychologist Elizabeth Schulz, who specializes in mortality-identity issues, an end-life crisis is an emotional state of fear and anxiety that often affects men and women between the ages of 65 and 100, and is usually sparked by the uncomfortable realization that one's time on earth is limited.

Read the entire Onion article.