I really don't have to be prodded to contemplate death. It's a subject I think about frequently.
When I was a kid, maybe about eight or nine, I wrote out my first plans for my funeral. What music I wanted played. Who would carry my coffin. What food I wanted at my wake. I used to think it was something everyone did--I mean, we all know we are going to die eventually. Why not be prepared?
Billy Collins remembers he's a mayfly . . .
Memento Mori
by: Billy Collins
what a mayfly I am,
what a soap bubble floating over the children’s party.
Standing under the bones of a dinosaur
in a museum does the trick every time
or confronting in a vitrine a rock from the moon.
Even the Church of St. Anne will do,
a structure I just noticed in a magazine-
built in 1722 of sandstone and limestone in the city of Cork.
And the realization that no one
who ever breasted the waters of time
has figured out a way to avoid dying
always pulls me up by the reins and settles me down
by a roadside, grateful for the sweet weeds
and the mouthfuls of colorful wild flowers.
So many reminders of my mortality
here, there, and elsewhere, visible at every hour,
pretty much everything I can think of except you,
sign over the door of this bar in Cocoa Beach
proclaiming that it was established--
though established does not sound right--in 1996.
Now that I'm much older, I realize that young children generally don't plan out their memorial services. Heck, people my current age don't do it either. Death makes people feel uncomfortable. I don't find the idea of my own end very warm and fuzzy. But, for some reason, I've been thinking about it a lot today.
I don't think it's a premonition. (I hope it's not.) But, walking along Lake Superior a couple days ago, looking at the sailboats and the deep blue of the water, I found myself half-remembering something that happened to me when I was very young.
I must have been five or six. My pediatrician or my parents discovered a tumor growing on the left side of my neck. It wasn't just a little bump. It was large as a golf ball. Now, because of my age, I wasn't given all the medical possibilities. The "C" word was never uttered in my presence.
I went to the hospital, was put under anesthesia, and the tumor was removed. I'm sure it was also biopsied. That's pretty standard when it comes to tumors. My parents must have received good news, because, when I got home, everyone was happy to see me. I got a ton of presents, and it felt like I'd just been born.
So, death and I have been acquainted for quite a while.
When I was around 13 years old, I ended up in a diabetic coma in the ICU. (No tunnel of light or dead relatives to report.) Since then, I've had blood sugars low enough to land me numerous times in ERs and ambulances. I'm sort of like the guy from Bergman's The Seventh Seal, playing chees with Death. Thus far, I've won each game.
I've updated my funeral plans several times. Changed some of the songs. Created a seating chart. Chosen some Bible passages. Added items to the menu at my wake.
Saint Marty isn't ready to pay Charon just yet. However, he knows he's going to have a delicious funeral lunch when it does happen.
❤️
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