Now Is As Good A Time As Any To Talk About Death

We didn’t talk about death in the beginning of 2016 and I feel this is where we went wrong. We did not try to stop it with our words so people died right and left. Along with democracy. In 2017 we will do better. Maybe not the democracy part, though.

I hate all the phrases used as a substitution for the word ‘died.’ ‘He’s in a better place.’ If he were, wouldn’t we all be trying to get there? ‘He’s gone to his reward.’ If that was true, why is it not what you get for winning the lottery? ‘They kicked the bucket.’ Unless you’re talking about Jack and Jill, fine. Otherwise? Dead. Dead. Dead. ‘He bought the farm.’ Man, RE/MAX is everywhere.

Around children, parents use euphemisms for death because they don’t want to upset them. When I was a child, my mother and father said they were putting my dog to sleep. And all I remember was that one night they went to his bed and I never saw the dog again. I made my sister switch beds with me and I’m still here. RIP Snowball.

When you die, there’s a bright light, ethereal music, and all your dead relatives line up to greet you. So you’re trapped in eternity with people you didn’t even like spending Thanksgiving with. Then your entire life flashes in front of you. “Oh, look! My husband left me for a twenty-year-old — again. Oh look! I gained ten-twenty-fifty-throw-that- hateful-scale-out pounds — again. Woody Allen summed it up best, “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

I obsess about death because during the California earthquake of 1994, a bookcase jumped off my wall and fell into the passenger side of my bed. Unfortunately, no one was hurt. I even have a bag marked In Case of Death and not because I’m a prankster but because I have all my important directives in there. Things like, “Please don’t look in the second drawer of my nightstand” and “Scatter my ashes in a Vogue Accessories closet.”

I’ve watched enough Law & Order SVUs that when I use a hotel bathroom and don’t find a dead body wedged next to a toilet I’m convinced it got its 2 stars by cheating.

I think the reason so many die during a disaster is that they save the wrong people: women and children first. Then the elderly. I’m thinking of the Titanic. They put the women, children, and old people in the boats and left behind the only group who had the strength to row.

The men.

You should only evacuate women and children first if there are spiders and bogeymen. And the elderly? How long will it take them to row to land when they can’t drive faster than 18 mph on a highway? They’re just going to get back to shore and run us over with their 1978 Lincoln Continentals. I’m glad the captain had the good sense to go down with the Titanic. If he lived, what were they going to do, transfer him to the Hindenburg?

Some people take ads out in their local newspapers to commemorate the anniversary of the death of their loved one. “For John: his first birthday in heaven.” How do they know which newspapers are delivered in heaven? And I’m not knocking it; it might be a very nice place although they probably don’t have Netflix.

And Thanksgiving is going to suck. Again.

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