The last several weeks have been extremely busy with a new teaching schedule at work, preparing for an upcoming art show, and launching a new contemplative meditation group. I admit had I not been home sick the last several days it may not have occurred to me to make an entry. Since no one contacted me about updating my blog, it may be a fair assumption that I was not missed.
My thoughts are somewhat more organized though still clouded. I haven't been so much out of it, as more in a casual fog of sleep and medication with television as an audio/visual companion. Sipping on green tea with lemon and honey, I've been listening to Peter Yorn and Scarlett Johansson's, "Break Up." I had forgotten I had a stereo until the Yorn and Johansson CD arrived in the mail from Amazon.com. Given my predilection towards being behind the times when it comes to most things, I still purchase CDs over and against downloading.
Whenever I'm sick, and alone too long in my apartment, I eventually start thinking about death. My consciouss reflections about death are in the contemplative sense of its greater meaning, not in the depressed driven response of suicide. I worked with dying patients enough to know that there is nothing romantic about it.
It may be that death is an anti-climatic response to living. Without undermining it, death is the end point; the concluding measurement to a given span of time from birth to its culmination. Nobody gets out of this experience alive, not even Jesus or Buddha. Perhaps, the late comedian Selma Diamond said it best: "I laugh, I cried, it became a part of me." For what it is worth, the notion of eternity is rather terrifying to me. It seems about as cruel and unjust as the notion of re-incarnation. One time on the ferris wheel of life is enough for me. My fear of death is coming back to do this life all over again.
I made the mistake of bringing up the subject of my death to my mother a few days ago. In a playful spirit to combat the nasal congestion and excessive coughing, I began to talk about which hospital I would like to receive treatment should my illness get worse. It then occurred to me that our conversation would be as good as time as any to discuss certain things about the eventuality of my death. The important matters like the arrangements I would like made, certain people to contact, my favorite songs I want played at the memorial, and several other things. She abruptly ended the conversation, and was upset with me for some time for bringing it up.
Again, I am not in the least bit fascinated with death. If I had my way, I wouldn't be there when it happens. I do have this fantasy, somewhat defiant and juvenile, that when I die I'm going with my middle finger in the air. I don't know if that is my way of mocking God. At least, no more so than those times when I thought God was mocking me with His silence.
I am generally not worried about some after life, judgment bound scenario where I have to give an explanation for one thing or the other. If there is some admission exam to heaven that depends on my explaining the choices I made, right or wrong, then I guess I am not getting in because that is too much work. It is rather absurd to think that in the great scheme of things, my life would be worth explicating after the fact. If anything, my response if questioned, by God or man, to state quite frankly that I did what I could to make the best of a bad situation.
Life has been rather good to me at this point. I want to ride it out to the end. If, by chance, my family does not abide my wishes to cremate me, I would hope they have the decency to put on my grave stone that I left this world still owing people money. I want to go out making jokes. Or even better still, I would love for my final words to read, "I told you I was sick."
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