End Game Anxiety

How much more pleasant my present would be if my future were not filled with such possibility for stress and conflict and alienation. Maybe the gods will intervene and once again give me gifts I don't deserve, in this case my own Get Out Of Jail Free card a quick clean painless passing but probably not. Instead I'll get some eventually terminal disease that my doctor will combat with all the latest wonders and the prognosis will be good and bad and good again in this medical dance that has become the American way of death, which I'm expected to embrace, of course in this age of medical miracles. Stop the presses! I ain't dancing. Once the music begins, once the ending is clear, I'm leaving the party - and leaving really pissed because I'm not getting the party I deserve the party we all deserve. Death should be institutionalized as a celebration of life. Throw me a farewell wake, make me the guest of honor as we celebrate my deeds and my family and friends my joys and my blessings, celebration and gratitude so my passing gets put in proper perspective. Then let medical supervision make sure I pass just as a gift of the gods would have it. But no, if I leave the party, the American way of death, I leave alone, like some feared rodent, some killer of precious ideologies, some crazy man who must retreat into an isolated corner to take care of business as best I can without support, without good wishes, bang bang, and what should have been a celebration becomes an ugly mess that somebody has to clean up. Lew Welch was right. e. e. cummings was right. Lord Byron was right. D. H. Lawrence was right. And I'm right, too.