Saturday Mournings

I don't know why this happens on Saturday mornings when I'm alone. I'll be sitting at my computer, surfing, playing Scrabble on Facebook. Inevitably, I'll go to iTunes and try to hunt down a new song that I discovered the week before that I can't live without. This week it's "Sing" by Peter Joback and Kate Pierson (of B-52s fame) - I think it's a cover of an old 60s song. I'll play the song and all these memories and thoughts of people who have died will fill my mind. Anne, Matt, my Uncle Saverio, my grandmother, images of them in my head, like grainy old film. Anne's preoccupied scowl on Melrose Avenue. Riding on the back of her motorcycle. The way she hung upside down on the jungle gym when we were seven while I practically wet my pants. Matt's freckles. Matt's cackle. Matt lying in his coffin with too much lipstick. My uncle's voice on the phone the day before he died. His beard. His smile. The way he rubbed his teeth with the plastic wrapper from his cigarette box when he was done eating. My grandmother's bear hugs. The ten dollars I got from her every birthday. The indecipherable half-English, half-Italian scrawl she wrote in my birthday card. Her pizzelli she made herself and wrapped in tinfoil and fed us whenever we'd come to visit. How we'd have to have my father translate half the things she said because we couldn't understand a word.

I'll think of how they're all gone too early, how their lives ended. How they're not here anymore, how I miss them. How my parents will, one day too soon, not be here anymore. And I'll get profoundly, immeasurably sad.

Life sometimes seems quite pointless, doesn't it? Death makes it so. What do we all live for, what's the purpose of it all when inevitably, there will come a day when it's all over and we're not here anymore? When the writer puts a period at the end of our sentence? We try to find meaning for our lives in our jobs, our children, our families, our pastimes, but in the end, the reality we cobble together for ourselves disappears like a mirage that was never really there.

On Saturday mornings, when I don't have a certain someone and her dog to keep me company, that's how it sometimes feels to me. I don't say this because I'm depressed, so don't get all squirrely on me and advise me on the merits of Prozac. I'm fine. I'm just telling you about a feeling I sometimes get. Instead of letting it pass like a bad fart, I thought I'd examine it for a change. Problem is, the second I try to do that, it's gone. It's like trying to dissect a zen koan. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Already, even as I type these words, it's floating away, away, away, into the air. The sad feeling never lingers long. It comes upon me like a wave and rolls away just as quickly. I guess I'd compare it to an emotional orgasm. It's short, quick, and cathartic. Once I squeeze a few tears out, I instantly feel better. But why Saturday mornings? And why is it music, a certain kind of heart-tugging song that brings it all out, if ever so briefly? That unconscious, she is a strange bird!

Here's the song and video I was talking about.



The song is beautiful, to me, anyway. A guy, his girl, and their dog, driving through the Arizona or Utah desert, encountering the angry, the frustrated, the dispossessed, and changing their reality in the simplest of ways. It's a choice they make. And it all starts with a song. It's a simple thought: Just Sing. Singing is I am here. Singing is I exist. The connections we make, the people who touch us, whether they are alive or not. There's a purpose to it all, even if we have no idea what it is while we're here. They keep driving, all the way to New York, all the way to Brooklyn. The exhaust coming out of their car is a happy green and blue. You see how loud and angry it is, how mean the people are to each other. A dog gets squirted on. But a song and people change. Even in the Big City. It ends with a Hark the Herald Angels trumpet player, a man on his apartment roof blasting it out while his cat watches. Mission accomplished, our protagonists drive back West, towards the desert.

If only we were capable of that kind of patience and love. Maybe that's why we keep ourselves so busy all the time. Easier to go to work, write that brief, clean the apartment, make lists, check them twice, plan playdates, drive kids to karate, go antiquing, meet that deadline, go shopping, have a glass of wine, zone out to Survivor, or read People magazine to see what hijinks Lindsay Lohan has gotten herself into. A busy mind is an occupied mind, n'est-ce pas? And an occupied mind frets not, at least on the surface.

But is an occupied mind really living, or just passing through? Getting to life's core and purpose means opening up and exploring your guts. It means making yourself a little vulnerable. People don't like to do that. Too much exposure. Too much downside. That's probably why the world is the way it is. No one really knows who they are and why they're here. No one really understands why our priorities are so fucked up in the short time we spend here and we spend so much precious time going through the motions of life. And if we stop the blur for a second, if we bother to think about who we are and what we're doing, the amount of time that's already passed and what we've lost and missed can induce a stark melancholy.

That's why some of us have Saturday Mournings.

Surreality

I first caught a glimpse of Matt's body through a crack in the door at the funeral home. We were late, my parents and I, on account of my long drive up from New York. It was all I could do to get out of bed by nine and on the road by ten. I didn't arrive in New Hampshire until nearly three o'clock, long enough to change into a gray suit, white shirt, and dress shoes, corral my parents, and head on up to Newmarket for the wake. We walked in and heard the priest in the middle of prayer. Matt's family was seated around a room, lined up in a row, listening to him. Through the crack in the door, right above the hinges, I could see a sliver of Matt's coffin, which was draped at the bottom with an American flag. Matt had served in the Army, but I hadn't realized he was honorably discharged. I thought his mental issues had interfered.

It wasn't until after the prayer, after we signed the book, that we walked into the room and I saw him for the first time in six years. The coffin was metallic gray and about eight feet long. The top half was open and there he was, dressed in a blue suit, blue shirt, and green tie. His eyes were closed. I didn't approach closely at first, so the details still escaped me, but it was him, a guy I'd grown up with, lying at the head of a funeral home at age 41, as if he were asleep. He had such a fucked up sense of humor, I kept waiting for him to jump up, point his finger at all of us and laugh his ass off.

People were milling about, talking and hugging in front of Matt's coffin. It seemed strange. At times, it felt like they'd forgotten that he was there, a captive audience to their conversations. A couple of times I caught myself with my back to him, and I had to force myself to turn around so I was half-facing him while I talked to people. It seemed the only respectful thing to do. It was his party, after all.

I went up to his brother Luke, who'd given me the bad news in New York, just after I'd returned from a reception with Mayor Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion. "Tim, this is Luke M--. I've got some bad news about my brother Matthew. Give me a call when you get this. I hope you can call me tonight, I'll have my cell phone on, so call me when you can." I called him back, and in the same night, traveled from the high of shaking the Mayor's hand to the low of hearing that my friend had died. I gave Luke a hug, he thanked me for coming. His eyes were wet and red. As a kid, Luke, who was two years behind Matt in school, was younger than his age, awkward and a little goofy. Now, a wife and two kids later, he appeared calm, controlled, and very much a man. Of all Matt's siblings -- originally there were nine of them, all older than Luke -- Luke was the leader. He was the one who called people. He was the one who consoled. I have no doubt that he played a big role in Matt's arrangements, since he lived only a few minutes away from where the service was being held.

I found Matt's father who looked nothing like I remembrered. The last time I saw him, many years ago, he had black hair and a dark face with an intimidating stare. Whenever I went to Matt's house, he'd walk around like he had somewhere important to be, like he'd rather be anywhere else, all serious, never saying a word. He wasn't friendly and he always intimidated me. At the wake, he was a changed man. He was smiling, clapping me on the back, talking about Matt. He'd aged significantly. His hair was all white, his face more wrinkled. He said something about Matt living the way he wanted to live, going where he wanted to go, and dying quick without any pain. "That's how we all want to go, right?" I didn't quite know how to respond. Honestly, he seemed like he was in shock. From his beautiful eulogy the following day, though, I'd learn the depth of this man, how he truly felt about his son, and how much pain he was in.

I found Matt's mother next, and she was crying. "I'm so happy to see you," she said in a shaking voice before hugging me hard. Even through the dizzy, numb state I was in, it almost made me cry. Remarkably, she looked almost exactly the same as I remembered her. Short, freckled, sharp blue eyes, and chestnut hair. She'd gained a little weight, but other than that, she was little changed from the last time I saw her. I couldn't believe it. And she still had the same thick New England accent. She asked if I was going to the funeral, and I said "Of course I am." Then she asked if I'd say a few words about Matt. I told her I'd be honored to. I learned later that it was Sister J. who volunteered me to speak, saying I could help lighten the mood with some stories about Matt. A moment later, she asked me how I was doing, if I had a special someone in New York. I said "Yeah, he's great!" She looked at me, confused, and I said "No, no, I'm kidding, it's a "she" and she's wonderful." Then she laughed and said it would have been perfectly alright if it was a "he," whereupon I reassured her and some grade school friends who were standing with us (some of whom I know believed I was serious) that I am in fact involved with a woman.

That's how it was. We were at a wake, a sad, miserable thing, and yet, we were seeing old friends, which made us all so happy. It was surreal, feeling such joy at seeing these special people from my childhood, hugging, smiling, laughing about our respective lives, while Matt lay at the head of the room, frozen in his final box. We made plans to get together the following night at a bar somewhere, to extend this reunion a bit more. Matt, however, would not be coming. He had somewhere else he had to be.

Afterwards, it was time for me to visit Matt up close. I've seen three dead bodies in my life: my grandmother, the father of a grade school friend, and now, Matt. Anne was cremated, so even though I attended her funeral and burial, I never saw her like that (which was perfectly fine with me). Even after having done it before, it doesn't prepare you for doing it again. I'd been edgy all morning, impatient with everyone, because I was unconsciously dreading the whole experience of going to my friend's wake and seeing his dead body. But I'd put it off long enough, so I excused myself and walked up to Matt's coffin.

I kneeled down on the pad and took a close look at him. He looked like he was sleeping. They always do. His eyes were closed and his freckled face looked peaceful. Then I noticed that his hair was lighter, almost blond, and it struck me that the stupid mortician must have done that. I got annoyed. Nobody better dye my fucking hair -- if I have any left -- when it's my turn for this. But his father told me the following day that it was Matt who'd gone blond to hide his graying hair. So instead of changing it back to the brown hair Matt had all his life, his father told the mortician to leave it blond. That's how Matt had it and why should he change it? Matt's hands were crossed over his chest. They, too, were freckled. I noticed a red scab on one of his fingers, an overlooked remnant of the violent way he died. He'd been hit by a car -- an S.U.V. There must have been blood. Nicks, scrapes, and bruises. They'd done a good job on him, though. He looked whole and peaceful. Still, like every body I've seen in that situation, there was a fake, waxy quality to him. He wasn't Matt anymore. The life, the "Mattness," was gone. The word "shell" kept popping into my head. That's what he looked like, a shell of himself. Take the life out of us, and that's all we are, these empty meat husks, useless slabs of carbon and water that can only lie there doing nothing. Rotting.

Luke came over while I was near Matt and we talked about how Matt was and how difficult his final years had been, both for himself and the family. I learned how Matt would pick up and just GO somewhere, anywhere -- to Memphis, to Biloxi, to Colorado, to the Blue Ridge Mountains, anywhere he wanted. When he called to tell his brothers and sisters he was in "Augusta," they thought he meant Augusta, GEORGIA, not Augusta, Maine. Matt lived off his VA benefits, but he often ran into financial trouble because of his illness. Whenever he'd lose a credit card or run out of cash, he'd call his parents or Luke or one of his other siblings for hotel money, or food money. They did their best to help him. It wasn't easy. They were perpetually worried that he'd hurt himself, or worse, hurt someone else. They lived with those fears every day. At the funeral, Matt's father compared Matt to a white water rafting trip. "A lot of the time, it got really bumpy and there were a lot of waves. But other times, it was serene and beautiful. We got to experience so many things, learned so many things, from Matthew."

I worked on a short eulogy that night. I felt drained, and honestly, all I felt like doing that night was sleeping. I didn't feel like being creative. I didn't feel like being funny. A lot of memories that I had of Matt were too crude to discuss at a funeral or were hilarious only to us. And how to convey those memories I could remember without offending anyone or making an ass of myself? The next day, at the end of an interminable Mass, a formal, ritualistic affair that gave no comfort to anyone, Matt's father spoke about him in such an eloquent, emotional way that I was dumbstruck. He sounded like a CEO who'd given 1000 speeches and who knew how to inspire people by describing his son's life in such an emotional way. I'd never heard this man speak more than 10 words, and now here he was moving me to tears.

My next, selfish thought was: "I have to follow THAT?"

I did my best. I talked about Matt's sense of humor, his laugh, his mockery of anything and everything. I conveyed some funny stories about us, some of which I alluded to in my entry last week. His parents loved it. His father was laughing the entire time. And as I looked at Matt's family while I was speaking, especially his parents, I got the strangest sense of deja vu. Seventeen years before, I'd given Anne's eulogy in Bethel, Maine, and it was her father and her sister who were looking up at me with tears in their eyes, smiling at my stories. Matt was in the audience that day. He'd driven us up, me and another friend, and we'd gotten lost. We finally arrived, so late that we almost missed it entirely. Matt was in a bad mood that day. It was May 1992, around the time his illness was probably beginning to manifest itself. He was surly and pissed off. Anne died at 23. We were all in shock and angry.

How could Matt know then that he would die 83 miles away from where we were burying Anne? Maybe his unconscious knew the troubles that were coming for him. Maybe that's why he was pissed. I've been thinking about things like that in the past week. How many times have I walked, driven, or flown past the place where I'll meet my end? How many times have I thrown on the suit and tie I'm going to be buried in? Do I own it yet? Maybe my bad mood on a given day is because I got too close to my dying place. (I must have a lot of dying places then.)

Matt died too young. He was 41. He'd just celebrated his 41st birthday the night before he died (though Luke told me he got confused and thought his birthday was actually the day before). Matt spoke to his mother an hour before he was killed, a final gift to the woman who brought him into the world. She said he sounded happy and optimistic, like he always was. That he liked Augusta and planned to stay there awhile. "The thing about Matt was, he was always trying to learn something, always trying to improve himself," she said. And it was so true. It comes through in all the old letters from him that I've been reading. He was always moving forward, always trying to be better, always exploring and seeking. His mother said he had spanish tapes in his car. His father said that one time he had to drive Matt's car home from somewhere because Matt had run into some problems, and the car was loaded with Matt's belongings and had no acceleration. "I wondered, what the hell did he HAVE back there?" It wasn't until he got home and unpacked the car that he found 300 pounds of weights and a broken down bench in the back seat. "Matt said that he needed them to work out and stay in shape," his father said, laughing.

And what is he now? Where is he now? Seeing him last Friday made me realize that there's much more to us than the bodies we temporarily occupy in this life. It has nothing to do with religion, which I've never been more down on than after that depressing Mass. It's just a realization, an understanding that there is a live body and a dead body, and it's not the body that gives life, it's something else, something mysterious and powerful. Even believing that he's taken a different form now, it was hard seeing him like that, especially knowing how hard those final years were for him. An illness he didn't ask for or deserve. One that even with medication is not easy to predict or control. It all has made me quite sad, and I think it's hitting me late. I was on autopilot for awhile there. Now it's setting in. I'm sure by now, Matt has been reincarnated and is on to his next life. Maybe he's a female baby in Thailand this time. Maybe he was the next baby born in Augusta, Maine the following morning. Whatever he is, wherever he is, Matt is now whole again and restored. Whether spiritual or physical, Matt has a new life.

Me? I'm just trying to get through this one.

A Hole In My Sunday

Every Sunday morning, come hell or high water, I watch Meet the Press. It's a ritual for me, along with my coffee and cereal. Doesn't matter if I've partied like a rock star the night before, doesn't matter if I'm hung over, doesn't matter if my houseguest or sleep-over friend is bored by politics. We're watching Meet the Press. It's like a vitamin. It gets my week started right.

For the past 17 years, MTP was hosted by Tim Russert, a proud Irish Catholic from Buffalo, New York who, before beginning a career in journalism, served as Chief of Staff to former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and worked for former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Russert had this big, bulbous head -- it looked like a potato on steroids -- and these happy blue eyes that got squinty when he questioned his guests. And his guests ran the gamut of political bigwigs: Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, John Edwards, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and every Senator you can think of. His favorite tactic -- and a favorite of mine to watch -- was to cross-examine his guests like a prosecutor, get their answer, and then show them 10 newsclips or videoclips of them saying the exact opposite. And they'd hem and they'd haw and have to explain the inconsistency with their typical bullshit spin. It was beautiful.

I also liked Russert because he wasn't all business. He was a huge sports fan and shamelessly used a few seconds of national television each week to give a shout out to his favorite teams. Rare was the broadcast that he didn't end with a silly rah rah to the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres, or Boston College Eagles. All objectivity and seriousness went out the window and in came his partisan self. How many of us would like to have that kind of forum to stick it to opposing fans? Finally, I admired that Tim was a family man who took fatherhood seriously. A few years ago he wrote an autobiography, Big Russ and Me, which he dedicated to his father. He wrote another book called Wisdom of Our Fathers, which collected letters from people who wrote to him in response to his previous book.

On Friday (the 13th), while taping voice overs for today's Meet the Press, Russert collapsed in the studio and died of a heart attack. It's eerie and yet fitting that this happened just after Russert returned from a vacation celebrating the graduation of his son, Luke, from Boston College, and that he died two days before Father's Day.

A few weeks ago, I was watching MTP and thought to myself "Damn, this guy is really young. He's going to be doing this for a long time. He might even go down as one of the great journalists of our time." Well, I was wrong about the first thought, but I think I'll be right about the second. What was remarkable about Tim Russert was how fair and well-liked he was across the political spectrum, notwithstanding his Democratic background and his tough questions. Tributes came from President Bush and even Rush Limbaugh, who's no softee when it comes to Democrats. It really is a shocking loss. He was only 58.

Russert's death has me, once again, pondering the brevity of life and the randomness of death. How is it that an old coot like John McLaughlin, who must be 126 years old by now (I swear the man's a vampire, God bless him) can live to a ripe old age and a vibrant and active man like Tim Russert can't make it to 60 years old? Genetics, DNA, health, eating habits, call it whatever you want. But I think we all signed a contract with term limits before we were born. One that will not be exceeded, no matter how many V-8s we drink or how many visits to the gym we make. Of course, maybe the fact that we eat garbage and sit on our ass all day and have genetic predispositions to certain diseases helps ensure that we'll fulfill our part of the contract. Who knows?

What I do know is, if you've got something you want to do, something you want to say to someone, do it now. You may never get the chance otherwise. And there's a hole in my Sunday. Meet the Press goes on, but it won't ever be the same.

Don't Fear The Reaper

I've got some bad news for you. You're going to die. Yeah, I know. So am I. Sucks, doesn't it? It probably won't happen today and more likely than not, it won't happen tomorrow. But it's going to happen. One day, sometime in the future, you and I will cease to exist. Who knows what'll get us? Maybe it'll be the cancer. Or a heart attack. Maybe one of us will be the subject of an act of random violence. That's creepy to consider, isn't it? Maybe we'll die in a car accident. Or a plane crash. Or of some rare disease we can't even name. Maybe we'll choke to death on a breadstick. Maybe we'll fall down the stairs, like that old pastry chef on Sesame Street. The means, the way we'll die, really isn't important. What matters is that we're all riding on that death train to the Great Beyond. We're all going to die. So, with that knowledge, with that certainty, how do we live out the days and years we have left?

Now, I'm sure most of you are thinking "What is up with this morbid shit? Why write about this?"

It's a fair question. Death makes people uncomfortable. No wants to think about death, let alone talk about it, until you're forced to. Until you get sick or until someone you know -- a family member or a friend -- dies and you have drag yourself to a wake or a funeral. Then death is in your face. It's unavoidable. You're staring at the lifeless facsimile of a body, the barren husk of someone you love, someone who was walking, jumping around, yelling, joking, and laughing just a few days or weeks before. Someone who is no longer. Then.... then there's no evading death. It's right there. You've got to face the unfortunate reality that you're never going to see that person again, at least, not in the way they were.

Most of us suffer through it, half paying attention, half in denial. We listen to the eulogies, laugh along, maybe even shed a few tears. Then we go home, shower, go out and have a stiff drink (or two or three) in honor of the deceased. We carry their memory with us, this tiny phantasm in the back of our mind who comes out whenever we hear a certain song or see a faded picture of the departed. But all the while, we ignore death. We put it in the closet, hide the boogeyman.

Ssssssh. Maybe if we pretend it's not here, maybe if we're really really quiet, it will leave us alone. Maybe it'll go bug someone else.

That's what we do, and it's human and natural. But of course, you can't bury death. Death buries you. Eventually, it comes a'callin' and all the nice things you own -- the Beemer, the B&B Italia sofa, the Rolex watch, the Gucci boots, the trophy wife --don't mean a fucking thing. They won't be going with you. They won't save you. All of a sudden you'll see them for what they were your entire life: objects. Toys. The people you love -- your mother, your sister, your father, your sons, your daughters -- you're going to leave them behind. They're not going with you either. All those sports teams you went crazy over, lost sleep over, spent hours, days, months following, like it was the most important thing in the world? Totally meaningless. Trivial. Because your life is ending. Who gives a shit about the Red Sox or Celtics then? All those hours you spent working in your office so you could ascend in your career and grab that brass ring, that partnership, that Vice-Presidential CEO/CFO/COO status, so you could become Head Cashier at the local Walmart, when you get the death sentence, you'll see that all that career climbing was really just to boost your puny, insecure ego. So you could feel competent, important, powerful, WORTHY. All that preoccupation with money, just to buy more objects to outlive you. What the fuck for?

Shat? Hit it, buddy!



In Myanmar and China, tens of thousands of people, close to 100,000 dead before it's all said and done. For my fellow Americans out there, let me put it into terms you can understand. That's fifty 9/11s. Almost a hundred thousand nameless men, women, and children, drowned and crushed. They call cyclones and earthquakes "Acts of God." I find that funny. Massive plates shift under the earth. A weather system kicks up in the tropics and drops a flood of rain on low-lying deltas, and these are "Acts of God." Like God is sitting there somewhere, bored out of his eternal mind, eating a Hot Pocket, and He decides He's going to "act" and kill a shitload of people for no apparent reason, other than their shitty luck at living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ridiculous. But what's remarkable to me is the utter randomness and indiscretion of these supposed "Acts of God." One person dies, and the other, perhaps just a few feet away, lives. Why? Who the hell knows?

Death is everywhere you look. It's in the newspaper every single day. It's gotten to be so common, so routine, that we barely notice anymore. Does anyone raise an eyebrow over a school shooting that results in fewer than ten deaths? If Columbine was the appetizer, then wasn't Virginia Tech the after-dinner aperitif? Nobody flinches anymore. It's got to be truly shocking and unexpected now. A lot of people have to die for most people to take notice, to feel death. Or, in the case of Ted Kennedy, sometimes only a single seemingly-immortal person needs to become terminally ill for death to really hit home.

In a week, it will be the sixteenth anniversary of the death of Anne, my first friend in this life, who was killed in a motorcycle accident at the very unripe age of 23. On July 21st, nine days after the wedding of my beautiful Sister T., it will be the eleventh anniversary of the death of my rambunctious Uncle Saverio, who died of a heart attack at the age of 48, three months before the wedding of my beautiful Sister J. I visited his grave two weeks ago. Even though I could see his tiny framed picture hanging on the stoneface, right above the letters that spelled his name and the numbers that marked his birth and death, it still did not seem real to me. That this man, who let me steal his cologne, who flirted with my girlfriends to piss me off, who gave me his dress shirts, who taught me to carry a bit more flair in my wardrobe ("Why do you always wear black? You dress like a priest."), who cooked like nobody's business and laughed at everything, is gone for good. At work, I still remember the sardonic and annoyingly funny disposition of John K., a paralegal who died of throat cancer at the unripe age of 40. I still have the thank you message he sent me from his BlackBerry a few weeks before he died.

All of it was a shock to me when it happened. Because death is shocking. It jars your life. When Anne died in 1992, I was working in a supermarket in NH. For days afterward, I would break down for no reason. I'd be stocking oranges, avocados, or maybe cucumbers, I'd think of something from our childhood, and then I'd start crying like a Russian grandmother. It was embarrassing. The first cut is always the deepest. Her death was a premature wake-up call to the bookend on the other side of life and the extreme rapidity with which it can manifest itself. Her death, and the death of my favorite uncle a few years later, chiseled away at my denial of death, at the non-reality of it. Death became real, as real a part of life as the sun rising.

So what to do about all this? What's the point? On the surface, it's pretty damn depressing. But I guess it's in how you look at it. If you think that this life, this body, this experience is all there is, yeah, it's depressing. If all you are is your body, and your body is destined to break down like an old jalopy someday, then I guess focusing on this stuff is a bit of a downer and you probably wish you'd read something else besides this drivel for the past five minutes.

But there's another way to look at it. One could view death as the finishing of one cycle and the beginning of another. We don't know what happens after a person dies. All we know is that a person's body looks pretty lousy after death. All that formaldehyde and makeup. But if you believe, as I do, that you're not just the body you're occupying in this life, you're not just tissue, organs, skin, and bone, then death holds an entirely different meaning. It becomes a passage, a waystation to the next existence. It's not the end. It's just an intermission. A potentially painful, slow-moving, and stressful intermission, yes, but an intermission nonetheless. Which will be followed by another act in the play that is your evolutionary spiritual progression. Death is like birth. Cold, unpleasant, shocking to the system, but in the end, temporary.

Even though the people I mentioned above have passed, as have several other members of my family, I've never felt they were dead. Gone yes, dead no. I actually feel the presence of these people in my life on a daily basis. While I'm walking to work, driving on 95, at moments of extreme stress, at moments of calm. I feel them there somehow. It's like they're behind this door and I can't see them with my eyes, but I know they're there. And that's really all that death is, going through that door, passing to the other side.

Still, I'm in no fucking hurry for it.