The Point Always Cuts You, When You Don't See It Coming

"Can you make a sound to distract the nurse
Before I take a ride in the long black hearse
I don't want to die in the hospital
You gotta take me back outside"- Conor Oberst


The cold winds of death swirl around me. Every year there are more funerals, more health scares, more accidents. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being sorry for your loss. I'm sick of funeral homes. I feel that sickness. They're all so pristine and try to be so cozy for us, to make us forget that the corpse of someone we cared about is at the other end of the room. Maybe a nice peppermint hard candy will get the foul taste of mourning out of my mouth. And, sometimes, they have coupons laid out. They want your "future business" and will give you a discounted rate for being a loyal customer. If that's the way they want it, then fine...but I don't want anyone giving me the "caring for the deceased is a noble profession" bullshit or telling me what they do has anything to do with religious faith. They would just as soon throw your body in the river, if there was any money in it.

My uncle has been sick and I'm being told that he's probably gonna die within the coming year. It starts all over again; another person in and out of the hospital, another last Christmas with a loved one. My mom is a wreck. I never know what to do with this shit. I can't talk to people who are sad. Explaining any sadness you may have to a person losing someone they were actually really close to just seems kind of petty and thoughtless to me. Empathy doesn't make them feel any better.

The only person who's death I am equipped to deal with is me. And, these things make me think about it a lot. My dad was telling me what happens a lot of the time is that the doctor will give a person medication to numb the pain and they will fall asleep and just pass quietly. I'm not like most people. Anyone who's ever known me or read what I write probably knows that. I have a fear of dying in my sleep. It's one of the things I really don't like thinking about. I want to die with my boots on. Technically, I don't have boots. I guess I'll go buy some boots, wear them, and then die with them on. I don't understand the mentality of what seems the majority of people who say they want to die in their sleep. That's what you want? Cause I'm not too sure there's anything after this life and I don't accept not wanting to know it's over. That's sad. I want to live it. I want to be aware, to have final thoughts, one last monologue, an epitaph for my own existence....even if it's only to myself. I want all my favorite memories to pass before me and be able to have a realization that it was all worth getting hit by a bus, in the end. Sleep doesn't cut it. Sleeping isn't living and it's no way to die. It's the easy way out, for theological whackjobs and the philosophically bankrupt.

Being shot in the stomach and dying slowly on the pavement is the way for me. It's a poetically apt end. Your life is literally running out, right into the streets. And, I could give a big, hollywood western style speech to those around me, gasping, holding on for dear life, asking them to tell someone I love them and so on. That's beautiful to me. That's why I'm becoming progressively gangster and will soon be getting into the crack game. I figure, in these tough economic times, the best investments are glocks and rocks.

But, anyway, I guess that's just the way it is. You think about your own death but it's the other people leaving that fucks you up. Losing someone....even if they don't die actually....a falling out with a good friend, a breakup, meeting someone amazing and then never seeing them again....these things are probably worse. You have to live that death, monotonously, over and over, side by side with all the other deaths that loiter in your thoughts. I miss people who live down the street. I miss people that I still talk to. It seems a lot more pleasant to sleep through life, rather than dying. But sleeping is for suckers either way.

You're gonna have to let it all go someday anyway, it could be any day, and beautiful pieces of your world are breaking off all the time, so why would you ever want to sleep? Why would you want any moment at all, let alone the last, to go to waste? Thinking that way, you're missing things before you even miss them. What you're really missing is the point.