I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but ...
... death can go f*&k itself.
[My apologies in advance for the somewhat veiled vulgarity, but sometimes you can't cuss something out without literally cussing something out.]
And I know I should be careful, so as to not to draw the attention of the grim reaper to me and mine ... or, to put the Greek into that same sentiment, so as to not cause Atropos the Moirae to slice my thread of life earlier than that which she had already intended (Hey Atropos! What up, girl! You looking fine! [You know, just in case flattery will buy me a longer piece of life twine.]). I needn't turn this into another spectacle like that time in college when I climbed to the top of the rock pile in the middle of a violent thunderstorm and screamed at God, asking "Is that all you got?". [Spoiler: it wasn't. But that's another story for another rant on another Saturday.]
As it is, while home reconnecting with my people just this past looong weekend, someone reminded me that I had once proclaimed that it was unlikely that I'd live past the age of fifty. To be fair, that grand announcement had more than a little to do with the fact that I started the double quarter pounder experience way before the rest of America caught on (I may have even gone triple with the meat a few times) and that I had many many months straight of filling my body with nothing but the grease of my employer Mickey D's. (Luckily, my youthful metabolism was on overdrive, catching up for the period immediately before my time at that fast food restaurant when my growth had been stunted by an obstacle that took the shape of my father's wife-of-the-time ... so I'm trying to say that I didn't end up all Morgan Spurlocked weight-wise, and only that I replaced a certain percentage of my circulatory system with mc-grease.) As I aged, I kept the spirit of that sentiment alive, but didn't live up to the letter of it -- in that I don't currently have a morbidity watch counting down the 7 years and 2 months and 20 days until I turn the big 5-0 -- but in that I've modified the concept to be that I'm hoping to only have my *first* cardiac event before the age of fifty.
Of course, that sentence also tempts the fates, since I know not everyone is lucky enough to have multiple cardiac events -- well, you know what I mean. It's just that I really really really don't want the first time be the only time ... the puppy-orphan-maker, so to speak. Being fearful, I did already have my first check up in this regard back in Chicago way before the move, when I found myself suddenly short of breath in the midst of delivering my class start openings at my job. One night, that experience was coupled with some unexplained pain in my lower chest, and zippity zappity, I was in the ER at the local hospital -- directly in a bed, as I had learned a health-care secret: "Whisper 'chest pains and shortness of breath' when presenting oneself at the ER front desk, and one will be in a bed before one can even finish the phrase". I was quickly discharged though, and a follow up ultrasound only briefly led to a moment of panic -- until my bill of health was marked clean when the blip on it was determined to be an "artifact". Only naturally, I interpreted that clean bill of health to be an edict to eat more bacon, which brings me full circle back to that anticipated cardiac event.
Now where was I? Oh right ... death: what is it good for? Let's be clear -- I'm not naive. I understood the whole circle of life construct way before Disney paid Elton John to break it down for kiddies everywhere (well, for *new* kiddies everywhere ... who hadn't already gotten the Disneyfied version of death courtesy of Bambi's family's slaughter). Growing up, I got it. Old people are here for awhile, and then they shuffle off this mortal coil. We be ... and then we be no more -- it's not as difficult a question as Hamlet made it out to be. There was a logicality to that process that made it understandable as the older generation met their maker ... Pop-Pop, Grandpa, Nanny, Grandma ... and then the Aunts and Uncles started ... but it still felt orderly. (Dare I say *very* orderly, once I was brought in to "case-manage" my father's death a few years ago.)
Even the many many trips I made to the Rainbow Bridge these last few years were palatable. Painful, yes. But in those situations I was involved in the decision, trying to figure out the right time to speak to the quality of life of a loved one and wielding the awesome power to end the suffering... and so it was with Demon in 2008 and Mystery in 2010 and Mauler in 2012 and Baby in 2013 ... all sorely missed, but all part of the responsibility one undertakes when one chooses to love a pet (and chooses to not have that pet be a turtle or a parrot, who must be accounted for in one's last will and testament).
The paragraph before the last one is calling out to me. I should clarify lest I appear flippant about the orderly passing of those of a certain age. I don't want to be seen as endorsing Aleutian health care (that's where they push the old people in a canoe out into the ocean when they are about to die so that they can go peacefully with nature and not be a burden on the survivors). And I did have to deal with the death of a loved one when my surrogate grandmother JoAnn died a few years back ... she supported me for nearly two decades with, at a minimum, weekly phone calls to check in and to chat about life in general (or Days of our Lives specifically), until I got the phone call (come to think of it, in October) when she said that she couldn't spend too much time on the phone because she was just so so so tired and that all she wanted to do was sleep. (She passed later that same week.)
[By the way, can I just rant within my rant and say how much Days of our Lives horribly messed up my understanding of how death works? Because I'll tell you ... to this day ... not a single loved one who has passed has come back from death (either as themselves or a long lost twin about whom no one knew anything). Just sayin' ...]
The real cause of my annoyance is when death decides to get all uppity (yep -- that's my new version of the classic "death be not proud" poetry ... demonstrating that, like Coca-Cola in the 80's, classic is better than new) ... and when death decides to take folks out of turn. DJ, who also passed in October (13 years ago this upcoming week) is my number one example of how the world of those left behind gets shattered when someone goes all too soon ... and how the natural order of things is turned upside down by the grim reality of a premature reaping.
This week, another soul was set free to whatever world exists after this one -- unexpectedly -- my college friend Tara. Mind you, she's not the first person I knew from college who has died ... that would be she-who-bared-her-soul-to-me-in-poetry-and-chocolate-cake Mria Fenty (god rest that soul ... as she was also she-who-was-doing-missionary-work-in-Africa and she-who-returned-with-an-illness-and-died-for-her-good-deeds ... and this was long before the current Ebola fad) ... but she is the biggest surprise tragedy I've had to deal with in quite some time. As I shared on the Facebook, Tara was just in the house for a nightcap one month before her passing, and we were reconnecting and making plans for the next time she was in town to visit ... when she insisted we'd have to go to the local MaiKai restuarant for the Polynesian dinner and show. (Which, now, we'll have to do more somberly before the year is out in her memory.)
I know I should know better. I'm too much of the 9.11 apocalypse-savvy generation to not respect the randomness of death. For that matter, I was too much of a 'Six Feet Under' fan to not find that randomness somewhat stimulating (and I still vividly remember one of the opening gambits with the blow up dolls for the sex convention that were filled with helium accidentally and then let loose from the truck that was in an accident on the way to the venue, causing a holy roller to think she was witnessing the rapture such that she ran out into the street and got hit by a bus ... but I digress ...). Yes this life has taught me to know better. But it still hurts. And it still doesn't seem right. And it's still a cause for someone to take death to task ... hence today's rant.
And it still creates a certain reckoning and a certain pause. To whit ... I was making plans for tomorrow that included a visit to a public art exhibit that will be around until mid-November and the other party gave off the vibe that, since there is still time, it maybe should be another Sunday instead. Without another thought, I expressed the *first* thing that came to mind ... which was that we're not promised another Sunday ... we should go while we were still here. Because isn't that the real lesson in all of this ... that there is "the moment" and "the now" and that's all we're promised ... so we need to not let those moments pass without saying what we should, doing what we ought, loving whom we love, expressing what needs to be expressed. That's the legacy of those gone too soon ... Sure, we all can strive to outlive our enemies (because, in a certain way, that *has* to be the beginning of some kind of transcendence, no?) ... but, if you've stuck through to read this full post ... that's a few dozen seconds that you won't be getting back (or minutes that you won't be getting back if you had to pause to google some of the random references). NOTE: I'm glad you did ... but now go build your agenda inspired by the image below (which I'll provide in lieu of my usual companion links) ...
[PS ... All this talk about death (coupled with my recent trip where I visited grave sites of family members and loved ones (it's telling that the Venn diagram of those two categories of mine create three distinct groups, no?) has led me to reach a conclusion. Whenever I go, I'm putting it out there to be documented in the social media cloud which makes it more official than any kind of other estate planning, that I'd like to be cremated with my ashes sprinkled into the peaceful H2Os of the major bodies of water next to which I lived ... the Quittie and the Susquehanna in central PA, Lake Michigan in Chicago, the Atlantic Ocean here in Ft. Lauderdale and, as a perk to the executor/trix ... the Rhine river in Koln. EXCEPT ... if my death is by drowning, then I revoke this statement, as that plan would just be cruel ... and I'm going to have to come up with a plan B (to be continued)] ...
