I. Ars longa, vita brevis
Upon the announcement of my diagnosis and of impending demise:
One called me up, crying, wailing like a paid keener at an Irish funeral, telling me that I was the only person they would ever have wanted to marry. (“Oh, mammy, mammy: who’ll jam me’ bread now?”)
Another called me up, crying,
telling me that they didn’t want to live
in a world without me
and whatever would they do without me as a daily presence in their lives,
to dry up their tears and bandage their boo-boos?
(Personally I wouldn’t want to live in a world without olives, or pizza, or blackberry sangria, dogs or wifi).
Another called me up, crying, to tell me that I had a very, very serious diagnosis.
Another called me up, crying, to tell me that the answer for me was to avoid sugar, refined carbohydrates, and drink plenty of water with apple cider vinegar: that alone would save me from the yawning jaws of the opened grave.
Another still called me up, not crying, but to inform me (although, they claimed, they knew I did not want to hear it) that I had particularly shitty health insurance (and by the way, could I help them with their taxes?)
II. Acta est finita, plaudite!
The emperor Augustus had it completely right. The play is over: don’t cry- applaud!
We’ve been dying since before the sun burned hot in the sky and the continents assumed their present shape, and our remotest ancestors were dying when they were little more than mud-slugs with genetic promise.
One would think that we would have gotten good at it by now.
We’ve been “going away” since we got here, since countless ages before alphabets, settled agriculture and urban settlements were a twinkle in the eyes of our (dead) ancestors. One would have thought that it was as easy as falling off a log.
We’ve been ending ever since we began.
Buddha said that it was the destiny of all compound things to disintegrate. Buddha prescribed a remedy for death: a single mustard seed, taken from a house wherein no one had ever died.
Sorry, item is out of stock and on back order.
Entropy is for real. Things come apart! Can you guess what’s coming down the pike?
III. Nascentes morimur
Sure, cry, rage for a bit
against the dying of the light,
but after you’ve had your little tantrum
realize there is much to be said
for taking out citizenship
in the Kingdom of the Shades.
More at https://m.facebook.com/ScribeBilly/.
