Death and a Brownie

I’d like to talk about Death for a minute. I’m going dark, man. Deep. Dark. Death. I’m talking 86% Cocoa. I’m on a plane, and I thought that I haven’t addressed the inevitable Mr. Darkdeed Himself. Mockery isn’t my only intention, because in the end we’ll all be Death’s brittle little potato bug.

Death is scary because we are afraid we’ll be exposed for what we really represent. Maybe when we die we have this instance where we stand at attention in the face of a mirror, and challenged to keep looking like an old school staring contest. In the mirror we see our full selves. We see what we’ve done. Who we’ve hurt. What remorse we’ve felt. What have we done in the grand scheme of things worth applauding, and what really meant nothing at all. Sometimes I think our lives are a series of failures, and we have an occasional victory. Victory is a strange word, because means the overcoming of something. In this case, it should mean one’s forgetting of oneself.

I think about what it might be to die unexpectedly, like most of us. Remember when we were kids and we heard the doorbell? We were SO pumped to go to the door to see what’s the happs. We aren’t sure who it is, but we are excited. Death is us going to answer the doorbell, and instead of something neat, we get a lit bag o’ poo.

Like, we don’t know what is on the other side of the door. What if it’s one of our old friends showing up to play Yahtzee? What if it’s the reincarnated Ed McMahan with a giant check chock full of zeros who’ve brought friends? Oh my gosh, what if it’s the girl scout cookies we ordered? We run to the door thinking “It’s the Thin Mints! It’s the Thin Mints!” and instead it’s Death and all her glorious pwnage.

Because death is like that ultimate last loss to humility, right? It’s our life’s last moment of “Guess what, you lose.” It’s that one last big failure. Like, it’s a big one too, because I pretty much do it without thinking right now. I just live. I breath and stuff, and I totally rule at it. Oh my God I love Oxygen. It tastes like chocolate to my lungs. I totally have no problem with it. But then one day we forget how to breathe, and it’s sad.

Death is weird because it’s so impersonal. You know. It’s like, it just comes and kills you. You don’t get to try to talk it out of its decision. It’s a very one way conversation that’s quite rude. Like you could be just trying to be polite. Death is down in the dumps, always sad, and you are like, “Hey Death, why don’t we hang out a while. Come over for some tea sometime.” Then Death just shows up and is like, “Hey, I want your lungs to stop their relationship with air.”

Sometimes I wonder if Death has a name that’s sorta swell. Maybe He’s like the youtube “Charlie bit me” kid. His name is like Little Timmy-Tommy.

What if when we die, Death shows up as an adorable little puppy dog that only we can see? And we know it’s death. Death is Scrappy the Puppy Dog. We are sitting in our little hospital bed, struggling to breath…and then we wake to the feel of a little dog licking our face and we first think, “Oh my gosh, I’m a child again.” Then Scrappy pours you a really strong cup of Sleepy Time Tea.

Maybe Death comes as no surprise to people… you know, maybe we know it’s there. Scrappy is just sitting in the corner, resting. Not really looking at you. But he’s there, and you know it. He’s adorable…and deadly.

The truth is we spend out lives not really thinking about it. We all really know it’s going to happen eventually. We know the party must come to an end. Most of us live unhappy lives with no sense of passion. We just go through the motions because our motivation is fear based. We don’t go out thinking, “I’m going to do what I really want to do.” We go out thinking, I’m going to do what I have to do to get by. No where in that thought process is anything about anyone else.

That’s why I think we need to celebrate it. When I die, I’m buying the 3 people at my funeral a keg. I’m going to make them sit through my favorite movie (which will be a home made movie of me making fart noises for an hour and thirty six minutes). Everyone is getting half cooked brownies with ice cream. Then everyone will be asked what they really love to do, and I’ll urge them to do it.

Whew. Ok. That’s enough about death. I’m on the plane and my diaper is just about full….although my comfort level as gone up slightly. Who wants a candy bar? I sure want one.