“You look good!” is what people say to me when they find out I am not 39. Not that people think I am 39, though some people say I am in the 40-something category. No one has yet said I must be 50. I take that as a good sign.
I am lucky to have good genes, a younger wife and a very young daughter. And an extremely young dog, too. So perhaps because of them I sort of blend into a cumulative effect of youngness. People will just assume that somehow I cannot be turning 59. Yet, another 365 days have almost passed for me on this earth.
And, for the most part, turning 59 age-wise doesn’t really bother me.
Especially after three years of pandemic and seeing people a lot younger leaving this mortal plane. That they sort of did themselves in based on some really, really bad advice only adds to the feeling of the futility of it all. No one talks about Ivermectin these days. I wonder why? Lemmings to the cliff.
However, taking into account the randomness of where the sickle of Death cuts, it seems that age is really not what she likes to go by anymore. Some celebrities perhaps, they always seem on the menu.
No, Death has become that person you see at a midwestern restaurant salad bar.
You Midwesterners know what I am talking about.
That salad bar with the supposedly sanitary plexiglass that has the nose oil from at least 500 people smeared in lines across like contrails from so many jet planes heading from L.A. to New York.
Why the staff neglected to clean it is a mystery as odd as the Georgia Guidestones.
You see, in American terms, the start of this bar is a salad laden Los Angeles. And New York is the rightful international polyglot of salad dressings.
But oh! The flyover country!
Here is where you find Death loves to linger.
Her plate festooned with that L.A. lettuce, but oooh, there’s dried cranberries! Oh, sliced hard boiled eggs! Whatever that marshmallow-whipped cream concoction is, onto the plate it goes. Corn niblets, yes!
Death loves a good salad bar. The Midwest is the best when it comes to this sort of extravagance.
And that is what worries me.
So, in terms of my place on the “Salad Bar of Life,” I hope I am for Death, a sunflower seed in the small container with the other sunflower seeds.
One knows on the midwestern salad bar that no one really touches those things. They sit, year after year, biding their time, thinking that someone must want them. They pray they somehow must amount to something before they are tossed into the giant dumpster void. And they are tossed. Usually after someone notices the mold growing or that the seeds have become sentient and talking about revolution.
I figure what bothers me more than anything else is there is so much more I wish to do before Death takes me away. I know I haven’t done enough yet. I want to continue to create community, art, music and write. I want to be able to finish the work on the house here in Chicago. I want to be able to fix a horrible mistake and get a place close to where my parents are buried in Wyoming for anyone, (including my blood family) to consider a spiritual touchstone. I want to be able to have Switchback decline a Grammy for “oldest Americana Celtic act on the planet.” Air Supply is already out there.
I do want to headline at Red Rocks before I go. Just because.
You see, I am at that stage in my existence. I abhor the idea of a bucket list, but I want to also be able to pass things along to my daughter and her kids and my friends, my extended spiritually connected family, and a world better from my creative efforts.
That is why I hope I am in the sunflower seeds.
But what if I am the nice sliced red beet?
Everyone who is midwestern knows that those on a salad bar are irresistible.
I am pretty certain after all this time that Death is a midwestern sort of gal. She is unpredictable, humorous in a way about life and very sure that because everything on the salad bar is there, it is good and healthy for her to take.
If I am in the beet bin. All may be lost already.
So, for now, I pray I am the sunflower seed. Next year if I make it, I hope I get to be cottage cheese. No one ever takes that on the big ol’ midwestern salad bar.
Death, if you read my blogs, you have heard me.
Skip the bar and order the soup instead?