Word Up, Sister!

I can’t help it.  I keep expecting to see you somewhere in the crowd.  I could swear that at any moment you’ll surprise me, we’ll embrace and you’ll ask me what I have been up to for the last year. And you’ll tell me about your latest project, or get rich quick scheme, and all of it in one sentence.  You’ll have this new trick to show me or a hot new girlfriend to introduce me to.  You’ll tell me about how your truck is running and how Shelly’s doing in med school.  “What’s the theme for Burning Man this year?  Have you talked to Rose?  Yeah, me neither.”

And of course, you’ll have a tale to tell much taller than the one you had last time. I’m never sure if they’re true.  Like when you followed the dead across America for a year and smoked a joint with Jerry Garcia.  How you lost your tuition money at one poker game in Vegas, but was happy because the drinks were free.

You never talked about the drugs. You never mentioned how the coke felt so right at the time, but cost you your daughter.  You never told me the tale of cold nights spent alone with the whiskey that kept you company and filled the emptiness in your home, in the backyard, and in your soul for a moment.  But you had it together when I met you with fistfuls of ginger beer and big league chew. 

I kissed your shoulder once.  You noticed and stared at me with a question on your mind that you never spoke aloud.  It was meant to be an expression of warmth, but your skin held an electricity that I didn’t expect.  But with it you had a coolness that shrugged it off as an accident. You really had your shit together, on the surface.  I never would have guessed that your foundation rocky.

You’d still be around if you truly had the world in your grasp, as you’d projected.  You wouldn’t have bought the whiskey.  You wouldn’t have bought the drugs.  You wouldn’t have been found 3 days later safely nestled in your own rot amongst the blankets after so long sober. Wasn’t it like 4 years or so?  I’m sure you could have told me the days.  You wouldn’t have crushed every friend you’d ever made.  You wouldn’t have broken my heart with your absence.  

With every death the light of life gets just a little dimmer.  Now I know why humans don’t live for very long.  A person can’t live in darkness alone.  The shit of it is that I can’t put it down.  I have certainly tried.  If only I had known, had a clue, been less surprised.  You had such a love for life, it never occurred to me that the junkie doth protest too much.  But your toothy grin is definitely gone, all for the sake of one last hit.  And when I shrug off this world like an accident I know that I will see you somewhere in the crowd. 

My mother was very young when I was born.  She was so young that returning from maternity leave meant looking for her first job.  As a stout, though, graceful woman she easily acquired a position working with the elderly at a local nursing home.  It was so local, in fact, that she could look out the back window of our apartment and see it quite clearly.  It always seemed to loom at the top of the hill, eyeing us like a watchful parent.  Mom quite quickly began to resent this closeness, but compromised by keeping those particular curtains closed a large portion of the time. 

Working with the elderly is an emotionally and physically tiresome, thankless job, but it is a way for a woman to support herself.  And my mother was glad to have the paycheck, therefore enthusiastic about her job. 

A few days into the job, she was bee bopping down the halls recording blood pressures and temperatures.  Just as she was leaving room 24 she noticed a nicely dressed man striding down the hallway.  The fellow strolled up to her and asked for the whereabouts of his father.  She recognized who the man is talking about, so she picks her jaw up off of the floor and escorts him to the room of Daddy Warbucks. 

Now Daddy Warbucks got his nickname upon arriving at the nursing home several years before.  At this point, my mother hadn’t heard his real name enough to be able to remember it.  So, when we talk about it we just call him Daddy Warbucks.  He was a man of considerable age, but always polite and pleasant with the staff.  He quickly became a favorite resident for many of the women walking the halls, including my mother. 

When they reached the room, my mother found quite a surprise.  Now, she had not yet ever seen a dead body before, but she could tell from across the room that Daddy Warbucks was stone, cold dead.  The man following her, however, seemed to have no inkling that things were off.  He breezed past her and sat in the chair next to poor, dead Daddy Warbucks.

 “How have you been, Papa?  It’s so good to see you!” the man said with a bit of glee in his tone as if no one in the room were dead.  Shocked down to her toes my mother goes to excuse herself, but the visitor called behind her. “Excuse me, Ma’am?  Papa seems to be a bit cold, could you find him a sweater or something.”  Without missing a beat, she hops over to the closet and grabs one of Daddy Warbuck’s favorite sweaters.  Doing everything that she can to act natural, she squirms with the body’s stiff arms and joints to work the sweater into a suitable position, meanwhile talking to him.

 “Gee, Daddy Warbucks, I bet you are really glad to see your son.  How long has it been now?” 

The son noticing his father’s silence pipes up “I know it’s been quite a while, perhaps even a year since I last came to visit.  But you know how life can be.” 

My mother trying to save the moment says, “Oh, but he seems so happy to see you!” 

“Yeah.”  The son seemed comforted with that somehow. 

By the time my mother had securely fastened the sweater on this man, the son seemed to be content with the visit.  He stood up, gave his father a hug, thanked my mother for her hospitality, and casually walked out the door as though he had done a good deed for all of humanity by spending 3 minutes with his father. 

My mother, still a bit befuddled, ran to the nurse’s station hollering “Daddy Warbucks is dead…and I just put a sweater on him…”

Though the direct confrontation with death was a regular part of the job, my mother eventually got the hang of things and as of this day has never changed her chosen profession. 

One of my few certainties is that I will die.  It is a fact.  But how will it happen?  I feel cheated by death already, because I know that I won’t get to see the last scene of the movie that I am such a part of.  The packing up and moving on scene that wraps everything up and gives the viewer a sense of completion and closure.  I want my money back! Or at least a hand in the writing process. 

The idea of death has brought me to the thought of my funeral. Ugh!  That could go badly!  So badly.  You cannot fathom the bad.  First of all, the prep for the funeral. This is where my relatives go thru my house to “clean up” and fight over my meager possessions.  And they inevitably find instead my staggering collection of dildos and other sex related paraphernalia.   Whips and chains and candlewax, Oh MY!  ***If any of my dear friends are reading this … take note.  Should I kick the bucket.  Break into my house and grab my sex toys.  Distribute them amongst  yourselves, first cum first served rules apply.  Consider it a keepsake that could only come from the likes of me.  *smirk. 
But keep the naked pictures of me and post them on the bulletin board at the funeral when no one is looking.  I would really enjoy that!  Especially the ones of me spinning fire topless.  I am quite proud of those. If you can’t find them, I am sure that Brandon still has copies. 
Things I would like to see happen at my funeral…A bar fight…Should my family insist on a christian style funeral…I want the preacher to leave with a limp and a bloody lip, my friends and family exchanging blows and howling at the moon. “Where is the cooler?  I need a beer and some ice before I go back in there to kick some more ass.”  People are angry in general and never have the opportunity to express it!  Let this be that opportunity.  Take all the anger that you acquire on a daily basis, take that fuel, beat someone over the head with a hymnal and light a fucking match!
 I want people to show up naked.  I want my friends to get arrested at my funeral for indecent exposure and plead guilty proudly.  Cover yourselves in mud and wrestle, winner gets all of my worldly possessions (with the exception of the sex toys.  See above).  And some tricky bastard should tumble the coffin.  It’s just an empty, freshly embalmed shell with no further use anyway.  Give the folks in the back row a laugh, for Goddess sake. 
I want a drum circle at my grave, and some Irish bastard to holler drinking songs about booze and tits and blue ribbons, thru a keg.  And bagpipes!  I want some fucking bagpipes, played badly! 
I want blunt honesty…I was a shithead so don’t paint your face with regret and talk about how much of an “angel” I was.  The most flattery I could expect is for everyone at the “party” to share a moment when I made them laugh. That is something consistent about me.  I have made everyone I know laugh at some point or another. Sometimes it is laughter thru frustration, but it still counts as laughter, right?