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To the End
What is death, anyway?
My “living trust” is done. I revised it recently, removing some of the legalese the attorney included to justify his stupendous bill, and removing also the clauses previously inserted to try to control what my children and grandchildren will do with their lives after I’m gone. No longer will I be requiring them to be employed or be in college, start or expand a business, buy or pay off a house or catch up on bills in order to get their portions of my life savings. I’ve arranged things now so that the very minute I’ve been shoveled out of the crematorium and poured into an urn, they’ll be able to spend their money. On what? I surely won’t know. ’Cause I’ll be dead.
No more the matriarch of my family. No more a person with an anatomy, a gender and a history. No more considering, concluding, cajoling. No more hankering, hungering, hustling, holding on. No more more. Dead and gone.
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How often have you heard about the dead not really being gone? “She’s up there looking down on us right this minute” is something I’ll bet you’ve heard more than once. But it’s absurd. Do the living really think the dead have nothing better to do than to surveil their survivors as they go about their days pouring morning coffee, complaining about the state of the economy, clipping their toenails, sitting on the toilet?
