Overdressed for the Afterlife

*Originally published 09.21.2019

 I found this poem on my birthday just a week or two ago. It was bizarrely fitting as I'd been ruminating about death for the previous few weeks.  Birthdays do that to me.  They make me give myself an accounting of my life and they remind me that Death can be around any corner on any day.  It's no wonder then that my birthdays, wrapped in love and celebration, also sport a poignant ribbon, a curly ribbon tied in knots and nestled in loops.

I have been fascinated by death for as long as I can remember. Even as a little kid I would imagine funeral scenes and wonder where the dead people in my life went.  I still do that.  I still wonder all the time where the dead people I once knew and sometimes loved went.  Of course, the older I get the more dead people there are in my life and the more opportunities there are to be shocked by Death's appearance. Funny that a person of my age would still be shocked when Death appears but it's true.  Death is such a mystery.  It's a huge void, a universe of empty and scary.  At least that's how it is right now.

I want to be someone who is nonchalant about dying.  Better yet, I want to be someone who sees death as the next chapter, the next adventure, a big surprise waiting, something about which to be excited.  Occasionally I reach that place and curiosity overrules fear.  Occasionally I can say I'm not scared, not at all.  It is what it is.  Of course, if I would just buy a religion (and lord knows, there are plenty for sale) then I would know exactly what comes next.  Unfortunately, I was born into a religion and I decided a long time ago that religion's answers are really no more certain than any other answers so I'm not interested in buying a religion, no matter how many answers it offers.

So, back to the poem....

"Yeah, I’ve seen the grim reaper wander
my neighborhood in a Chanel suit and a diamond
studded scythe because we all want to be overdressed
for the afterlife, we all want to believe
there is a special place for us."

Isn't that the truth?

 

Everyone Is Acting as if We’re Not Temporary, and I Am Falling Apart in the Privacy of My Own Home

By Kelli Russell Agodon

When he said, Sometimes we learn the most
from losing, I think how often I’ve been bamboozled
by life, how I’ve dropped a quarter in a slot machine
and instead of cherries got coffins. Got death?
Yeah, I’ve seen the grim reaper wander
my neighborhood in a Chanel suit and a diamond
studded scythe because we all want to be overdressed
for the afterlife, we all want to believe
there is a special place for us. But when I watched
the body of my nana fade into thinness I thought
please let me leave early—in a plane crash, car accident,
a lightning bolt, don’t let me hold on so long
I am a body longing for someone to text it
—hey babe, I’m kind of into you. To say, I miss you
even though I don’t visit. Death and we butt dial
the wrong person. Death on a good drunk
of port. Once I remember my dad saying,
You are worth more than you think, as I always sold myself
off at a discount and I wish I didn’t, I wish I didn’t
say how much I hurt on social media
but sometimes I just want to believe I’m not alone
like how we’re all doing cartwheels on life’s grass
until someone lands in a sinkhole, until one of us
decides it’s late and the streetlights
are telling us it’s time to return back home.