The Heart Before The Hearse

 What? Another couple of weeks I’m lookin’ at 82, and I’m not supposed to think about this stuff? I could ignore it except I can’t. It’s only the biggest event in my life since the first biggest event in my life - Birth. You know what it’s like trying to contemplate this thing? Like standing at the base of a gigantic redwood, leaning back as far as possible, and still not able to see the top. I’m supposed to ignore this and go about my business as if yeah, yeah, I get it, OK. Next. I’ve got things to do. What? What things? Like going into the hospital for a test and winding up with your heart, literally, in some stranger’s hand? Will that do for a thing? Open heart surgery? Triple by pass? Not one. Not two. Three! Gimme a break.

So, the big sleep, the long goodbye, annihilation, eradication, extermination, termination - I’m supposed to jump up ‘n’ down and click my heels for joy at the prospect of necrosis? Eternal Rest? RIP? You don’t rest when you’re dead because you’re dead and don’t do anything but transmogrify into something someday will be unrecognizable. You rest while alive, while breathing, while loving what’s around you. Rest your eyes upon…your garden in August; your favorite person disheveled and in bare feet; makin’ out on the front seat of your International Harvester, short bed, pick-up on Gold Creek Loop in Montana; Father’s Day; your honorable discharge…Here ye. Here ye. Hang it on the wall, and be proud. This ain’t the 60’s no mo’. Nobody’s gonna spit.

And speaking of death…

It was with me years ago when I trekked across Alaska mostly by my lonesome. I developed some kind of malady which gave the medical folks in Los Angeles some concern. This was a Thursday. They wanted me in the hospital on Friday. A test had not come back with news they wanted, so better to keep a close watch. Could be gruesome. Things were critical, except I didn’t think so, and I was the one who felt fine. We had a conflict. I was due to take off for Alaska Friday so no way was I gonna back off that one - LA to Fairbanks then bush plane way far north to a place where, at one point, I’d be fifteen miles from another human being. How could I miss that?

“A man with your condition should not be going to Alaska.”

“I feel fine.” I did. I felt great.

“You could die,” they said.

“At least, I’ll be in Alaska. Listen, You’re still trying to figure out what my condition is. You don’t even know what to call it, yet - some kind of “-itis”. Here’s the deal: if I have this thing, I’m going to Alaska, and, if I don’t have this thing, I’m going to Alaska. I’ll check in with you when I get back.”

”If you get back.”

Obviously, I got back, and didn’t have the thing I can’t remember I was supposed to have had. Something else but no big deal, a secondary not a primary condition of whatever it was. Jamie met me at the airport. We’d only been dating a short while so what I did was contract with her neighborhood florist to send her a dozen roses two weeks after I’d gone but a few weeks before I came back. Smart move, Bub. That smile when she saw me!