(This entry to be read to the tune of this song.)
My body has been consistently trying to kill me for the last few years. You would think that my literary estate would be at the front of my mind. Well, I put it off and put it off and put it off because I had faith that somehow I would survive. What a fucking stupid idea. I'm surprised 2016 failed to take me.
But I got it done a few months ago. So yeah, if that blood infection virus thingy killed me, my literary estate would have been secure. There's that.
But then there's other stuff. What happens to my Twitter when I die? My Facebook? My bank accounts? My PayPal? Everything else? Honestly, one of my biggest quandaries was this: if I died, who would know? My family. Some close friends. No one else.
I took some time to write it out, and it made me feel odd. Right now, as I stand (or hover like a madman above this glowing electronic device that could possibly blow the kneecap off of the world), when I die there will be someone who will have my passwords. They will post something to my Facebook. And then they'll write something else to link to that Facebook post for the Twitter people.
I have written you all a message from beyond the grave. That's some Future Mystic Bullshit for you right there.
When I was a kid I remember my grandparents taking me out to the middle of nowhere to show me their tombstone. Both of them are still alive (for now), and they have their tombstone already. Their names are on it. Their birth years are on it. All it needs is their bodies under its ground and their death dates. How fucking odd is that?
That's what it feels like to have an envelope on my night stand that says, "In the event of my death," on it.
The very thought that the world will continue to work after I'm gone is obscene. Dammit, I'm the only one who matters, right? The world is supposed to end with my death. Nothing matters after I've breathed my last.
It's a weird thought that occurs to me every once in a while. In my heart of hearts I know that I'm a small cog in the giant machine of life, and when I die there will be a fresh part to take my place. But dammit, there's an indignant part of me who insists I'm vital to the continuation of existence. That part of me is fifteen years old no matter how old I get.
Here's the bad news: everyone reading this right now is going to die. Here's the good news: everyone reading this right now is going to die. Life is a snake constantly eating its own tail. Or, if you prefer your philosophy to come from an HBO show, time is a flat circle.
We all have that adolescent asshole living in our psyches. But we also know that (s)he is an asshole.
Is there an afterlife? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that our energy leaves our body and gets recycled into the universe. I don't mean to say that our consciousness survives. I don't think it does. I think whatever we were gets eaten by the worms. They take that energy to make more worms. Until some fisherman digs them out of the ground and uses them to capture fish. That energy goes into the fish. And then it goes into the fisherman and his family. And so on and so forth.
One thing seems certain: we will all be a fisherman's shit before we become something else. Life's cycle takes a while before we become something bigger again.
Sweet dreams.
I know we've never met in person. For all you know I'm some crazy person who would fuck with you if I had a real chance to. To be fair, for that matter, vice/versa. Chris and I drove to Pekin, IL in 2015. Had you & I been acquainted then, I would have asked if you wanted meet us halfway for a beer before we headed back home to AL. Had I known you were in the hospital so long I would have sent flowers with a goofy card to cheer you up. As soon as you told me why you were there, I looked up home remedies for your ailment and then realized you could look that up yourself. I don't have to be "the peanut gallery" all the time. If you want a homeopathic alternative to prescription meds, you're a big boy and I don't have to "mother hen" you. That's just the way I am. But it makes me slightly tear up when anyone I enjoy online talks about their imminent death. I know we all will die, but I think about this subject too much on my own, no one else should talk about it "out loud." We watched the college championship football game tonight. I cheered for Alabama because my former mother-in-law lived for that shit. She died in September and I sat on my couch holding my urn of her ashes, (I posted a pic on Twitter), sitting beside her sex offending, smegma snorting, piece of shit son's urn of her ashes. (He hasn't bothered to get his portion of his mother's remains from me.) I sure hope she was looking up or down and saw me wearing her hat and jumping up and down with her urn, only because she would have cared about that football game. I don't give a shit. I don't care if it's "hell", "heaven", or "VIP purgatory", the people who are left when we're gone need to believe we're somewhere. We should always act like those we have loved and lost are watching us. Wouldn't it suck if we could see after we're dead and all our friends are acting like they don't care and never tell us they care because we didn't think it would matter? We don't know what happens after this. I don't care how many books are written about people who "came back to life", we really don't know. I've lost people. When I see or feel something that makes me think of them, I tell them. When I dream about them, I thank them for coming to me in my sleep. Because if it's really them, it would suck to find out I ignored them. If there's anything you ever need in the way of encouragement or just someone to vent to, hit me up on the DM's. If death decides to take you from this world, I won't hesitate to mutter downwards (heehee) if I see something that seems like something you would get a kick out of. ;-) Take heart John Bruni, I will still share dirty jokes and toast you with drinks if you ever pass on... whether you're watching or not.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry about your loss, and I would have definitely been down for that beer. As for having our dead relatives looking down on us, that's a pretty good feeling for most things, like when you accomplish something cool, but the idea of my mom looking down on me while I'm watching porn . . . When I die, I'm going to be grounded for after-life.
ReplyDeleteBWAHAHAHAHA!!! OMFG, just tell yourself that's not something your mom wants to see. You better not look down on me when I'm watching porn if you die!
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