Many times I’ve
thought of pre-composing Aunt Janet’s eulogy. And I picture myself standing before the “mourners,”
dumbstruck. But I won’t be there. I’ll be gone. I’ll book a flight to anywhere.
I won’t be there for the funeral. It won’t matter then. Nothing will matter.
The rest of the family be damned. They are undeserving of anything further
from me.
When Janet dies
I’ll sell her car. I’ll empty the bank account and cash out as beneficiary. I’ll
disappear.
No I won’t. I’ll
be sad for some time, remembering. I’ll show up at the funeral and say a few
choice words. It will all pass in slow motion. Then it’ll be over. I’ll gather
up my life, my thoughts, and consider my granddaughter. Her middle name is
Janet. It seems I’ll forever have a Janet to take care of.
I’ll drive
around in my ’74 MGB sports car, wondering which way to go, what to do. Maybe I’ll
take an excursion to Africa, a safari. As ever, I will have too many options
and will make seemingly nonsensical choices. Those choices will take me to more
useless places, more collected experiences. Yet these choices will be tempered by Faith.
I’ll be
somewhere warm, at a café overseas, sipping a drink and looking out over an
expanse of sea. I’ll be wondering about life, then, as I am now. I’ll rent a
room above a cantina and go down from time-to-time to play the piano. I’ll have
girls come visit me every now and then. I’ll take long, lumbering walks to
nowhere in particular. I won’t have a cell phone. My computer will not be wired
up for internet; it will only serve as a machine to produce more writing, more
useless drivel that no one will read.
No, that’s not
the way it will go. But I won’t eke out a living anymore as I have been. I’ll
rid myself of that horrid mortgage. I’ll move on. My house here on Ednor Road will soon be just
another memory. But what of my marriage? Will that, too, be yet another memory
hole? Perhaps.
What will be
the shape of society when Janet bites the dust? Will a civil war be waging?
Will Trump be dead? Will globalism descend like the shadows of buzzards’ wings
over our once great nation? Will there be too much turmoil to get out?
What will
become of this old guy? At almost 65 I’m finally feeling frayed at the edges.
My working life is behind me. I work only fitfully now, trying to stay in shape. It’s
all just a lot of tail-chasing, really. But I’m as tired of the alternative take
as I am the old fake-stream news.
Where can I go where
Alumni magazines
Won’t find me?
Where can I hide
From the zip-boom-click-bang
Evening news?—
The pittledy-poo-da
Newspaper punditocracy?
Alumni magazines
Won’t find me?
Where can I hide
From the zip-boom-click-bang
Evening news?—
The pittledy-poo-da
Newspaper punditocracy?
Life has been
one big practical joke. The world is laughing at me, but I don’t care.
No, I don’t care
about much, except that I worry for loved ones coming after me. How will they
manage? How can they cope with the madness of this world? Do they know that
they are Spirit-beings devolved into debauched human form controlled by THEM?
Shouldn't I say something? No, we must all find out this frightening truth by ourselves; it
will do no good to say anything; experience is the only true teacher. But can’t
I, shouldn’t I tell everyone I care about that THEM-that’s-got-is-THEM-that-gets?
Yes, I’ll say
something. I’ll let the truth out just enough to linger in the backdrop of their minds,
just like Granpap did with his old morality tale, that poem: The Two Roads.
…A shooting
star disappeared athwart the churchyard
Such are the wasted days of my life…
Such is the sad
truth of the world today. Success breeds more contempt than failure, though
failure is contemptible in its own right. How we struggle to tell it like it
is, only ending up falling into the illusions of our own dreams. And fall we will, hoping for the gift of grace, though forever
falling away from it in fits and starts.
In the end, life grinds us down. We must delight
in the folly of it all. Yes, I must laugh and say to myself, “I did my best”—and be
done with it. Oppressively sad or true? Don’t fret; just smile and move on.
Keep moving on, tired old soul, keep moving. Slog on.