Let’s get this outta way now. We are gonna die. You. Me. All of us. No one gets outta here alive. We are gonna die. It’s a coming for you. The Grim Reaper. Contrary to any thing you may have heard, or hoped, death does not take a holiday. It sure does take a lot of our time before it gets here though.
Seems we are obsessed with death while we are alive. We are handed images of heaven, then the Ten Commandments, and assorted other things in fine print of biblical proportion. Kinda of a “here is what comes next and you damn well better be ready all the time or you can gonna hate being you forever and day or so without any time off.”
Death is a part of life. Making it too big a part kinda wastes the living part of stuff. Death is a cliff we will all walk right off because it is the next step on our path from where we come from to where we go. It is there. We will walk off that cliff. Some folks spend way too much time looking for the cliff. They walk tentative and easy and in fear as if a misstep moves the cliff closer. As if they will see the cliff and have time to kinda pause and say, “hmmm……maybe I will just go back a ways and come back to the cliff later.”
Well, boys and girls, that ain’t how it works. You walk off the cliff and you are gone. At least from here. You are back to where we were before Mommy and Daddy trip their own light fantastic and made magic that grew up and can read big books now.
The cliff is kinda known though. We all hope it is our right to move off the cliff in old age while sleeping after celebrating tons and tons of birthday parties. Secretly, we all believe the other folks will get the cliff while we wish them well and get on with our lives. Young folks run and dance and sing like the cliff is just a rumor. Old folks realize the cliff is real and likely even real close and start looking backwards at where they were. The cliff ain’t back there so it feels safe and warm there. Doesn’t work though. The cliff shows up between bites of Tapioca and they don’t have to worry about when anymore.
Death is big business. People do their best to buy longevity. It does kinda help since we can bring the cliff closer with stupid choices. That is an acceptance of the cliff that means eat, drink, and worry life to nothingness and the cliff sees you are excited about it and lets you jump off way early.
I learned about death in a lots of places. Not by experience yet but I will handle that when it comes. As a kid, death was something for old folks. There was a kid in fifth grade that died and that was sad but seemed kinda unreal. His name was Tommy and he was a good kid. Then he died. I knew there was some important message there. I also knew it was not me and that was enough at the time.
One time, my buddy’s Dad died. That seemed harder and more real for me. My buddy and I were just kids. He was a kid. I was a kid. We each had a Mom and a Dad. Then one day, he didn’t have a Dad. I was supposed to go the funeral parlor and do something. Not because anyone told me. Just because I knew you were supposed to do that like my parents did when people died and stuff. I didn’t go though. It kinda creeped me out so I just didn’t go. Could have but didn’t.
A week or so later, my buddy came by the house and we sat on the front stoop. We didn’t say much to each other. Sometimes are like that. You don’t have to talk to know how the other guy feels. Only, I don’t think my buddy knew how I felt.
He didn’t know I felt guilty and weird and sorry for him and wished I had gone to the funeral home and knew what to say and had done the right thing and helped him and his Mom and his sisters and his brother and told his Dad’s body I was sorry and stuff. He didn’t know any of that cause he couldn’t feel me. My buddy was in a place where all he felt was hurt and alone and confused and shitty.
We didn’t say much. We just sat. That was enough. My buddy missed his Dad. Death is like that for the people on this side of their own cliff.
Death is sickly kind in the way it enters our lives. At first, it is hardly even mentioned. Although it is the one thing after birth that links us all, we are shielded from it for many years when we are children. Then, as our understanding of life increases, it begins to appear. Sporatically, so we can learn of it in bite sized chunks. From a human perspective, it begins small. Almost innocent. Goldfish. Perhaps a hamster. The family cat or dog. Remember how that felt? Aw, gee, why did Tippy have to die? That kinda sucks, Mom. Can I have another Twinkie, please?
Then it comes in smaller, although distant, forms. A Grandparent. Another Grandparent. Maybe an Aunt or an Uncle. It might even be a Teacher or a Neighbor. It kinda pops in to say, “Hey, remember me? Just wanted to let you know I am still here. Enjoy High School.”
In High School it arrives again. More impact this time. Usually involving two of our favorite forbidden fruits, cars and booze. Might be cars and drugs but that is pretty much the same thing. Actually, the very same thing but let’s save that for later.
Someone we knew from Gym class or home room dies. It is tragic. Sometimes it is grizzly. A beer bottle threw the heart. A beautiful head found somewhere other than attached to the budding body. This death stays in our life longer. It is talked about at each party for months to come. Parents use it to remind us how lucky we are it is not us. School usually has a special assembly. Most tout out the worst safety movies ever made with a State Trooper visiting hospital beds, graveyards, junk yards, and maybe even morgues. We are fed the reminders of death to ensure we live well. At least that is the premise.
Usually backfires though. Gives a pretty a damn good excuse to party while you can when you are fueled by hormones and when the hell am I gonna get laid concerns.
I remember the grizzly accident that claimed four young lives in my home town. I really believed the bit about the beer bottle and the severed head for a long time. Right up until I realized it really didn’t matter if that part was true. Four people died and they died too young and they would not have died if they made other choices. Of course, at the time, I was sorry for them, glad it wasn’t me, and buckled down for Algebra finals and the Homecoming Dance.
There was one girl I met in ninth grade whose death touched me in ways that made me question things in much deeper ways. We went to the same school for one year and one year only. Ninth Grade. Thompson Junior High School in Middletown, New Jersey. Her name was Denise.
It was not that Denise and I were close. We had a few of the same classes and enjoyed joking around and stuff. We did not date. We were not an item. She came from Middletown and I was bussed in from Keansburg since Keansburg High School was under construction and would be completed the following year. Keansburg and Middletown were different. A lot different. Just the way it was.
So Denise and I liked each other and lived very separate lives when we were not together in a few classes and school gatherings. I thought she was sweet and cute and a lot more. She was a really good kid.
In my Ninth Grade yearbook, she wrote a full page note to me. I still have it to this day. It stunned me. I really mattered to her. The note felt special. It reminded me how much we can mean to someone even when we might think we are just a friend or acquaintance. I read the note a lot. Part of me, the boy part, wondered how the heck I could have been so clueless. Why hadn’t I asked her out? That sort of thing.
Another part pf me was happy. Happy I could be that important to someone so sweet and nice. The note became a secret treasure.
Denise died two years later. I heard about it a few weeks after it actually happened. I didn’t get many specifics and didn’t ask. Dead is dead once all is said and done. The news saddened me in a deep…morose kinda way. It was like I lost her and never really had her. It made me see how much more she should have tasted and lived and enjoyed. It made me wish I had talked to her and known her more. It made me realize that she was more of a factor in my life than I suspected. She let me know I touched her life more than I knew and that made her touch my life more than she knew. More than she would ever know it turned out. She shared and that linked us. As I share this with you I realize that Denise and I are still linked. She is still that girl that I knew a bit then and appreciated a lot more later. She is special and cute and went off that cliff way too soon.
So death sneaks in to make sure we do feel it looming. It visits a friend or two and then we enter the adult world and death becomes daily news as strangers explode in the sky and loose all their air miles. War turns death to a number right up until someone dials ours to let us know that another friend from High School now has their name etched in marble at government expense.
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