Death Be Not Proud

I think about death a lot. I would like to think that most people think about death a lot, but I know that would not be true. I think it is important to think about death. One can not truly appreciate life until one has contemplated their own demise. It is going to happen, and not all the money, fame, or prayer in the world is going to stop that. It is going to happen. Once you have accepted that fact, you tend to view things in a different light. Most people are afraid of death, but I am not. I am actually kind of looking forward to it. I want to see what’s beyond this realm of our earthly vessels.

I often wonder how it is going to happen. Will I slip on a banana peel and fall down some stairs in a comic sort of tragedy (as everyone knows I hate bananas)? Will I drown? Will I put a gun to my head and end it on my own terms? Or will I just simply grow old and then begin to really look forward to it? This may sound a bit morbid, but I am really curious as to how I will bite the proverbial bullet. I would like to be creative and say that I am suffering from Cotard’s syndrome or that I am living in some kind of Sixth Sense type of world, but that’s just dumb.

I actually have my funeral song figured out. When I die, at my funeral, I want the song “Ol’ 55” by Tom Waits to be playing as they wheel my casket out of the church. Actually, I want to be cremated, so I guess they wouldn’t wheel anything out of the church, would they? I don’t want to rot in the ground like most people, I want to be burned and my remains spread out somewhere, anywhere but here, really. Yes, I think cremation is the way to go. But I want that song played at my wake. Would I even have a wake? I guess death really is complicated when you think about it in a broad sense.

The song is the most important thing I think, and that should tell you something about me. I read that most suicidal people worry about what song they will play when they cut their wrists. I wonder if that is true. All I am worried about is what song is played at my wake, and I want it to be that song. The song isn’t necessarily about death, at least not directly. But the lyrics lend a feeling of saying goodbye when the time has come, whether or not it was life he was thinking about when he wrote it is up to debate, but I still think it is a good song for a funeral or wake. Depressed yet?

Anyway, I am off to ponder death some more. No album reviews today as I have been busy, will catch up in the next couple of days.

-B
And my time went so quickly, I went lickity-splickly. Out to my ol’ 55.