A Few Quick Thoughts on Dying

Fucking BASTARD.

                        I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work…I

                        want to achieve it through not dying.

                                                                                                Woody Allen

I’m with Woody. But statistics show that the average person, at some point in his or her life, will fucking die. Hefner is a sick, sick anomaly, and don’t even try to use that de Havilland woman from Gone with the Wind. She’s four hundred years old and has cankles the size of toddler torsos. She’s probably like my sixteen-year-old poodle and can’t see anything but halos of light, and she wanders around in ever-tightening circles looking for a good spot to pee; but Olivia could just go for God’s sake because she has on a Depends anyway. That’s not living. The only thing separating Miss Melly from death is embalming fluid.

Statistics also show that if you don’t make your final wishes explicitly known, you may find yourself buried in a Harley-Davison casket, forever clad in a dooky-brown three-piece leisure suit circa ’77. Is this your idea of eternal bliss?

You don’t want to think about your mortality, do you? Who does? But pretending that you don’t tuck that hemorrhoid back in every morning isn’t fooling anyone. You’re aging. Your ass is dropping faster than Rep. Weiner's credibility (and apparently his trousers), and you can safely conceal Little Debbies in the flab-flap that hangs over your waistband. Of course, just behind the happiness-Hoover of Age, Death lurks right around your corner like a child molester on a daycare playground, waiting, waiting to have you for its special pal. There’s nothing you can do, really, so why not accept the impending obliteration of all that is you, the final curtain, the living end? It’s not the end of the world.

Now isn’t the time to dwell on heaven or hell. Chances are you’ve already screwed up more than that dumbass Charlie Sheen, and we all know you don’t get a do-over. Plus. You’ve got much more pressing concerns: Burial or cremation? Open or closed casket? Funeral or memorial service? And with the exponential explosion in funeral technology, do you want your service on a remote thread with a 29-second delay so that your camo-clad relative over in Iraq or Afghanistan can “see” what a good job the mortician did on your make-up? Because, clearly, you’re going to have relatives over there for decades to come. See how much you have to do? Better get cracking.

When my grandmother died, she left instructions so detailed a Kardashian could follow them. My mother, on the other hand, knew when she was going and still didn’t plan a damned thing. “I’m going to die soon,” she told me one cheery Saturday morning. “My life insurance papers are on the desk in the guest room.”

            “I’m not listening,” I said, switching off my hearing aids, slamming my hands over my ears for extra blockage. “La la la la la.”

            A couple of months later, she sold her huge house and jammed sixty years of crap into a two-bedroom apartment. She was heartsick to have such a reversal of fortune in living quarters. “You’ll find somewhere better,” I promised.

            “I’m never leaving here except in a body bag,” she said. I wonder how she knew.

            The weekend before she died, she gave me a copy of her apartment key. That came in handy three days later when I found her dead, dead, dead body.

            She knew she was going, but she left all the afterlife decisions for someone else.

            You do not want to do this to your survivors.

It’s like you’re slapping them from beyond so hard that a couple of teeth loosen up.

Just suck it up and walk your sagging butt into the nearest funeral home and make your plans. By the way, all morticians really do have that murky green cast of a freshwater fish underbelly for a reason. Part of the initiation rite for the “exclusive club” of dead-handlers involves replacing their own body fluids with enough formaldehyde to manufacture three double-wides. So. That explains the clammy hands and dank earth breath too.

You can opt for cremation over traditional burial, but, honestly it’s going to run you close to $7000 either way. Down at the crematorium, you’ll be slipped into a 1600-degree retort until most of you has evaporated, and a cookie sheet of calcium white shards remains. Then, you’ll be ground into a fine dust in the pulverizer to comply with most state standards that cremated human pieces be no larger than 1/8 inch, which is frankly a size most of you never want associated with one of your body parts, now, is it? Before the baking, some wacky families still rent a casket for the whoever-came-up-with-it-is-a-sick-bastard “viewing.”

Whatever you decide, just make sure you let your near-and-dears know. Put it in writing. Be specific. Your family and friends will be operating through a soupy haze of shock and despair after your death and cannot be held accountable for their choices. You will have only yourself to blame if you spend eternity in shit-colored polyester.