“We eat too much. . .we need to stop.” Daddy said this, or something like this at the family reunion in 2006. He had just buried his wife of 43 years. Ma died of obesity.

You would think fat was harmless enough. It might be unsightly, uncomfortable, maybe. But deadly? I used to joke that fat was bad enough, but couple it with drugs, like John Belushi or Chris Farley, and it would kill you.

It wasn’t funny watching my (drug-free!) mother go down. I didn’t take her breathing problems seriously–not even when she got her own personal oxygen tank.

Ma used to tell us that she was healthy as a horse. When she was on her way out, her doctors told us repeatedly that she was a sick woman. Turns out, obesity carries a bunch of conditions with it. Ma had most of them. Asthma? check. Diabetes? check. Heart arrhythmia? yup. bad joints? uh uh shortness of breath, difficulty walking, etc. Apnea? well, that wasn’t proven, because she got up too many times in the night to deal with incontinence.

So, while we had seen a slow decline for 20 years, in the end, Ma’s body shut down quickly. It was ugly.

After Ma died, I’d go to Walmart and see some enormous person riding an automated cart with an oxygen tank, and I would just sob. So would the kids. I wanted to scream at them that it is deadly! Have you seen The Biggest Loser? Fat people can absolutely work out and eat right! I know how hard it is, but you can do it–YOU MUST DO IT!

But I don’t say anything. Even when the person I see at the grocery store is my dear high school friend. I see high school peeps everywhere–living in my home town and all. Some have gotten so big. And what do I say? “My mother died a senseless, early, excruciating death, and you’re on the same path?”

That kind of talk didn’t help my mother. She used to scorn the poor fat woman with the two canes–’I'll never get that bad,’ she’d say. Then she got a cane. Then a walker. Then the coma-like condition and confinement to bed.

I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. And yet I see younger and younger people with the same build that she had. Younger people hospitalized with scary problems. It is so much easier to sit in front of the TV than it is to move. So much more convenient to sit at the computer than to go outside and do something.

But our sedentary lives are killing us.

This year, we’re hosting the family reunion. Daddy is trying to eliminate the banquet, (which traditionally falls right on the heels of lunch, which is usually right after breakfast), in favor of the whole family spending more time outside playing. I get his point.