When you get my age you find death lurking
in the shadows just beyond sight. You
are conscious of your mortality and your limited future – something that never
really concerned you when you were young.
I don’t worry about death, but
I know it is the final payment we all owe to nature.
My grandmother would tell the
story that her family always got together at Thanksgiving at the great
grandparents house and it was an unspoken joke that my Kentucky
I don’t have family to share
with: just my wife. At my stage of life I
find it important to do the things I enjoy.
When I am finally gone I have only one request: that my wife put my
ashes in a douche bag with bourbon and water and run me through one more time.
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| The last ride! |
the Ol’Buzzard
Great post as usual...I am becoming more and more aware that more and more of the people I thought would last forever are gone. I lost a few good friends in the last few years and each one taught me a lesson in humility and dignity. 3 years ago, I was in NYC and I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in years on a corner. He was a poet, intellectual writer and a real Rastafarian. He was a cultural enigma, a black man with real dread locks, who had an acute sense of humor and intelligence and a cross cultural way of relating to anyone...We had been real friends for years in the East Village. It was a grey day and I saw him at a bus stop on Ave B. He looked frail, but he was so up! I was so happy to see him, instantly resuming a conversation we had been having a few years earlier. He asked where I was straying and if he could visit me. I invited him for dinner at my friends house. He showed up with a bag which he gave to me saying that he had wanted to give me a few things...actually some pretty good first edition Edward Gorey books and a chunk of hashish the size of my thumb...I was really floored, why was he giving me these things? He said just because he had been thinking of me and had wanted to give me something for my friendship. We had a great evening. He died of terminal ling cancer 3 days later. I will never forget this noble man.A true friend.
ReplyDeleteI remember my mother saying before she died that she dreams every night and everyone she dreams about is dead. Aging sucks but it is better than the alternative.
DeleteO'B
Are you sure you wouldn't want to be shot off in a cannon with fireworks instead, like Hunter S. Thompson did?
ReplyDeleteor perhaps dressed in a superman outfit and thrown out of an aircraft over New York City.
DeleteOh, that's just evil LOL!
DeleteI actually had a conversation with a friend who is a mason...a stone sculptor who has carved designs into the stones of my barn...see, I wanna be a nasty lawn dwarf that has to be hidden in the bushes somewhere....with a solar powered micro chip powered motion detector speaker that says. "psst, hey lady, over here...I wanna show you somethin"
ReplyDeleteInteresting...
DeleteO'B
Sounds like a nice way to go :)
ReplyDeleteIt would be my choice; now if I could just talk the wife into...
DeleteO'B
“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
ReplyDelete- Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
We are cursed with the realization of our own demise. Best not to ponder to deeply - realize it; accept it; and let it go.
DeleteO'B
I've always said I want to be cremated and then have the ashes scattered on a nice windy day. That way I've got a better shot at becoming the grit that gets into people's eyes so I can continue to be as annoying after death as I often was in life.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the idea of fireworks, but when I checked into what it costs to get cremains packed into fireworks I gave up on the idea. There is a company in California that will do a custom fireworks show using your cremains, but it's pricey.
Ashes into space...or snort them.
DeleteO'B
Screw it. I refuse to go.
ReplyDeleteAt 66, I am faced with my own mortality more and more. Being dead doesn't bother me so much as the passing from one side of the curtain to the other. Cremation isn't possible in an Orthodox country so they will have to sharpen my feet and pound me into the ground as best they can.
ReplyDelete