SLIPPIN'

Hey y'all.  Been thinkin'.  Felt like sharin'.  

Let me begin by statin' somethin' I would imagine we can almost all agree on:  Nobody lives forever.

     Okay, I expect some of you are already formulatin' philosophical and spiritual arguments to the contrary.  (I'm bettin' that I can name a buncha y'all.)  And that is absolutely how it should be.

     But, I ain't talkin' about the Mysterious and the Mystical.  I'm talkin' about the nuts and bolts stuff-  the body agin', then failin', ceasin' to function.  The Scientific.  The Literal.  Clinical Death.  That thing where you're lookin' at someone, and you realize that the concept of "someone" no longer applies, that this is not a viable blending of organic machine and electric spark.  It was, but now it ain't.  It stopped.  That thing, that process that animates the flesh?  It's stopped.  I'm talkin' about that.  That kinda Dead.  The really clear, even blatantly obvious, lay-eyes-on-it kinda Dead.  A Failure Indisputable.

It is just this condition of which I speak.

     Some of us are fortunate enough to shake off this Mortal Coil in an instant.  As quickly and as surely as the grindin' of a butt beneath a boot.  Maybe a brief moment of discomfort, possibly followed by a hand to chest and a drop where you stand.  An "Aw shit!" moment, but a brief one.  They're the Fortunate Ones,  perhaps one of the few (only?) places I might use the word "blessed."  Or the "in their sleep" folks.  How perfect is that?  Never quite got why you'd see "peacefully" preface that last one.  Asleep.  Ain't the "peacefully" part a given for most?  Asleep?  (Sign me up for either.  One quick, the other transparent, utterly beautiful.  About as good as somethin' like dyin' could get.)

     The radio has started playin' some shit that I ain't exactly enjoin'.  The coyotes off to the South don't sound like they're fans either.  Gonna give it a couple minutes to change...

Back-

     Me?  I never had much of a Fear of Death.  Maybe when I was a little kid, but that was usually driven by things like scary movies and public service announcements.  And the way adults around me reacted to it when it took place close to us.  I developed a fairly clinical way of lookin' at Death early on.  That worked for me later in regard to my own mortality.  

     But comfort with my own situation didn't exactly translate into comfort with the situations of others. For that, I would be required to convince others to adopt my point of view, my outlook, thus allowin' me to relax knowin' that they felt the way I did.  Sounds not-so-complicated, but proves to be a near impossibility.  And I get all that.  I have no fear of Death, but heights can scare the shit outta me.  Not judgin'.

     Many of us suffer before we're granted the respite that Death delivers.  We may linger, in a myriad of degrees of discomfort rangin' from a simple loss of quality of life to constant pain and misery.  That's the shit that makes me uneasy.  The thought of lingerin'.  Just lingerin'.  Just lingerin'.

     I've held my own notions about that shit, that waitin', that feelin' that it may come down to just wantin' get it over with.  Even got to look right at it recently.  Perhaps that's the bigger deal than droppin' dead or layin' sick and in dread of dyin'.  Maybe the most frightenin' thing of all is the possibility that we might find ourselves in that place where we're just waitin' for Death.  Just stuck with no control, no say.  Forced into waitin' to get it over with.

Fish~