My Death and Other Things I Got Wrong

Death can come at one in many different ways. It needn't always be dramatic, such as a car crash or a staggering down the staircase heart attack. Sometimes it is as imperceptible as closing one's eyes and falling asleep. This is what happened to me, near as I can figure.

Death is happening to us all, slowly, from the time we stop growing up, at around 24 or 25. That is when most intelligent people have their midlife crises, not in their 40's or 50's, which I like to call "the years of regret." 

The exact moment on the timeline passes unnoticed by most, but there is a subtle shift and the fulcrum becomes weighted toward decrepitation and decay. Whereas, before that moment, the flower petals were ever new, opening fuller and fuller into the radiance of life, now their edges begin to curl inward and dry up. Invisible changes are set in motion, and the process of withering begins.

Something like that happened to me, but, like most people, I just passed it off as a bad night's sleep or a hangover, nothing that another night's revelry wouldn't set right. 

Milestones occur, of course, like your first grey hair or a cracked tooth. Stronger and stronger prescription eyeglasses, then bifocals, then dry eyes. Insomnia. Diabetes. Maybe you pull the cancer card, and suddenly it seems like death is a real thing. It has arrived at your doorstep and is bidding you to pack up your bags, it won't be long.

But back to my own transition, which I believe occurred sometime in 2015. It was still taking care of Sharon, working and feeling I was on a carousel of torment. Never a moment to rest or recuperate, I longed for an escape from my life of drudgery. 

As one makes a wish upon a star, I made a wish upon a couch. I lay down on the couch in my downstairs room, the room I often got sent to by Sharon for misbehaving in her presence. Many arguments found me exiled to that little room, punished to sleep on the couch and "think about what you did." I tried my best not to do that. 

I tried to think about something else, but my mind would give me no peace. So, I began to think about death as a possible way out of this whole revolving door of despair.

"Kill me now!" I begged of God, the devil or whoever might be in charge of such things. 

I wished so hard that I could feel something pop. It was an intense pinpoint of rage and despair that focused on an area of my abdomen where I presume my stomach or duodenum or perhaps some intestines reside. I don't know, I don't have a schematic. 

I didn't know it, but, actually, on that day, my wish was granted. In all but the formal sense, I was dead. I had surrendered my soul, my will to live and all hope for a happy life, and now I was curling up and drying out from the inside.

I kept going to work, though, and taking care of Sharon until I couldn't. But those in the know could see something was missing. The light in the eyes had dulled and dimmed. My movements were robotic, muscle memory, like a snake with its head cut off still squirming about for a bit, unaware. I was the walking dead.

So much time has passed since Sharon has left this earth, bound for wherever the consciousness goes. I am still earthbound, a ghost. I'm aware of my body still. I don't think I've completely severed the bond with it, though daily it tells me, "It won't be long now. Better pack your bags." 

I don't mind. It's not like there's any enjoyment in being a zombie. Shoot me in the head already, please, somebody!

I do have one bad thought, though, that occurs to me regarding my demise. Suppose my consciousness decides to stick around inside my body even after my heart has stopped, and I'm no longer breathing? What will that experience be like? 

Will I be aware of each and every little cell dying and decaying, getting eaten by bacteria from within? Will I perceive, in a hellish fashion, the destruction of my body by cremation or by vultures and ants? If we create our own reality, then with my dark imagination, I'm sure to be in for a treat.

I guess I'm going to try to do what everyone else does: deny my way right out of it. This is not happening to me. Not today. I will go for my walk and water my flowers. I will feed and pet the kitties and tell them nice things, so they don't worry unnecessarily. And like Wiley Coyote, I just won't look down or acknowledge the cliff, off of which I have already stepped. 

 

I need an exit strategy

Not for this life, though that's something we all need to consider, but for my dreams. A lot of times I'll be dreaming and slowly waking up to the idea of, uh, waking up. So I start packing up my mental notes, trying to consolidate what I should be taking away from the dream so that I can write them down. 

But then something happens, and I forget everything, as the reality of waking up approaches. I need to perfect that intermediary state of awareness of the two realities so I can at least bring back some cool stories. Ah, well, my double life is a mystery even to me.

Denise Graubart

 

That's all I got. But if anything else comes to me, I'll get back to you.

Open a window

I was staying with Greg and Edrie at 412 C West Wilson, the place Gracie and Bill rented for years in Glendale. I was an older adult, somehow down on my luck and needing a place to stay temporarily. I was home during the day while they were out to work. 

I must have smoked some pot in the house. It was getting late, and they were due home any minute, so I was frantically trying to air the place out before they got home. I opened up a bunch of windows and hid the stinky pipe and weed in a ziploc bag in a drawer under the wooden bedframe. 

I went about the house spritzing Lysol (not too much or it's obvious), and I set about cleaning up some of the mess I'd made throughout the day. I contemplated trying to cook some dinner but realized that it was already 6 o'clock, and I should have done this an hour ago. 

As their guest, I really should be making myself more amenable. I settled for just trying to be less stinky.

Too late

 

I had a dream last night, but when I woke up I got a phone call, and try as I might, it's not coming back now. 

That's ok. Dreams are a substitute for reality, and long distance is, as they say, "The next best thing to being there." So a phone call trumps a dream. But what's next? A knock at the door? Ok, I suppose not.

I gotta mow the lawn today. It's been two weeks and it's getting wild and woolly. All the rain and sunshine are making it grow exponentially. 

The same with the cat hair situation in the house. Cold weather, then hot. Cats are shedding again. I broke the vacuum cleaner and had to skip a week. Now I gotta play catch up. 

Looks like I picked a bad week to stop doing meth.

The TIbetan Book of Honda

The recurring them of going to training camp, or elements thereof, is not lost on me. I keep dreaming that I'm in some version of my life where French Camp, the Honda Training Center, figures in. 

In this dream, I was first talking to Steve Clark, who was trapped in Corning, because he was drunk and couldn't drive. We were talking on the CB, and I was trying to get better reception by sitting on the bank of a dried cement lake bed. I couldn't hear him very well because of some music which he was playing in the background.

Next, I was walking down an alleyway, and in the distance, I recognized a group of people standing against a wall. I could make out the blue an grey uniforms of YC Honda.  I also recognized the forms of the Giant, Andres and David, aka "Jackie" Chanh. 

Somehow figuring in were Rob Peavey and Kim Johnson who were in an estranged, split up relationship due to Kim's infidelity. 

I greeted the group with a friendly, "Hey, motherfuckers! Where's my raise?" 

High fives, handshakes and fist bumps ensued, as they recognized me for the former employee returning visitor that I was. 

As we walked toward a run-down set of hotel rooms, it was apparent that these were training center lodgings, and the group was on a mission from Honda. I noted that it looked like they'd renovated slightly since my last visit there. We always got the duplexes anyway, though, which were slightly more upscale than the crap row of single units. 

Kim was distraught over her relationship, so we sat down for a moment on a picnic table and I tried to console her.

"It's ok," I said putting my hand on hers as I watched some butter melt on a pancake on a paper plate on the table.

"No, it's not," she said.

I agreed with her. Nothing would ever be the same, but I was thinking expansively, as in, "Ultimately, everything is OK. Anyway, we'll be getting to the hotel, and isn't it nice they've renovated it?"

Previously, before I was speaking to drunken Steve Clark, I was in another set of hotels and the folks there were mostly pre-pubescent teens looking for a place to masturbate. I don't know how I fit in to that situation, but apparently I didn't, because I found myself seeking other accommodations. 

I woke up after the Kim conversation, begrudgingly opening my eyes because I recognized that I was having a dream and I actually needed to wake up and document it before before the strands slipped through my fingers. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was and is playing softly in the background as I get my bearings in my awakened state.

YC Honda Noir in Lake Isabella

The saga continues. I was visiting YC Honda, this time as a retired guest, not a prospective returning employee. I was talking to my replacement, Johnny aka Juan Castillo. I was asked to hold a slab of beef, which I dutifully carried about for the remainder of the dream. But other than that, I was just there as a visitor, not responsible to do any work. 

I began giving Johnny what they call "the business," in Leave it to Beaver parlance. I told him what a shame it was that someone had ruined the whole day by ordering an engine for a car which I had noticed sitting gutted on a lift.

"Unless," Johnny said connivingly, "they ordered the wrong one, and then it's easy street, see?" The noir was palpable in his voice.

"Why would you wish that? How does that help the dealership in any way?" I chided innocently enough, in my estimation.

Well, it wasn't innocent enough for Johnny, who took offense immediately. He threatened me menacingly with a dipstick, pointing it at me like a foil, with which he intended to skewer me.

"It must be nice..." he began the standard reply to my implied accusation, launching into a tirade of irate indignance at the perceived inequity of the workload situation.

I cut him off, "No, Johnny. You got it all wrong. I'm not laying any trip on you." 

I tried to explain that it was all in fun, I was implying no guilt. He was having none of it and kept me at a distance with his dipstick sword.

I sought approval of another worker, a lower level grunt responsible for cleanup and shop maintenance. I don't remember his name. 

He was a  jeans and t-shirt wearing throwback to a '70s version of what auto mechanic-ing used to look like. He sported a strawberry blond mullet and rolled up short shirtsleeves, a pack of cigarettes, worn chevron-like on his shoulder, where an ASE patch or a tattoo might have just as easily resided. 

He didn't give me much support, but seemed concerned that I hadn't taken very good care of the meat, which was now filthy with shop dust.

I rinsed the meat off with water from the hose reel on the ceiling, which was intended for filling radiators and windshield washer fluid reservoirs.

"Good as new, see?" I said, using the wise-guy vernacular. Why I was affecting this same infectious 1940's detective movie dialect, I don't know. I guess it's common to adopt the lingo as a gesture of respect. 

It was all about respect in that type of shop environment. In real life, I'd have adopted a Mexican accent, using inflections common to the local custom. Just trying to fit in, bowing to the majority. At any rate, I wasn't the alpha in this situation, so if Johnny was going to speak like Bogart in some detective flick, I guess we all were.

I followed him to a place in the shop dedicated to the rebuilding of transmissions, where a torque converter assembly class was in session. They had the flying saucer shaped devices in pieces and were applying a friction enhancing goo on the interior before welding them back together.

"I didn't know you could teach monkeys to rebuilt trannys," I said, apparently unaware of my insulting choice of words.

Johnny didn't give it a second thought, as he was not the monkey I was referring to, but the teacher of monkeys, and as such, he looked down on the student workers as so much chattel.

Not much of this dream has really referred to Lake Isabella, so I'll simply state that I know that's where it was located. The dealership sat on the property owned by William and Grace Helton, my childhood surrogate grandparents. 

Some other drama had unfolded, but it is eluding me at the moment. Something regarding nightfall, coyotes, perhaps a horseback ride across the nearby mountain range, I don't know. Sketchy details of a patchy story, since forgotten. I gotta get up now, so I'll leave the notes unfinished. I've got Facebook to attend to. And I have to pee.

Living vs living the lie

It occurred to me that in my addictive need for attention, I am making the case against my disability. I post pictures on Facebook, in the hopes of getting likes, to feed my ego or give me some sense of belonging. I crave the positive feedback. 

I noticed quite a while back that when I post a picture, rather than just text, I get more responses. Sometimes people just read a few lines and go ahead and like the post just because of the picture. I know this is true because sometimes the text accompanying the picture is completely incongruent with the photo, and people will just go ahead and like it anyway. 

Plus, the time it takes to actually read the wall of text makes it unlikely that they'd actually read it and digested it in the short amount of time from when it was posted to the first like coming in. But people like pretty pictures and especially ones that make it appear that a person is having a good time. Ugly pictures, say of rotting animal carcasses or wounds that won't heal, not so much. 

Likewise, the stories of how you overcame something or just plain learned to appreciate something nice get big likes. Complaining about your rotten luck or the miserable state of your life might get you a sad emoji, but after a while people even get stingy with those. Anyway, enough about other people. Back to my own inconsistencies.

So, if social media posts are examined as evidence in the review and reversal disability claims then I'm apparently fucking myself by making it appear that I am having a good time. I would love to have that capacity. But what goes on in pictures or my occasional "look what I did" stories are simply me trying to push start the car. I'm manufacturing moments on film saying that this is what a good time would look like with me having it. 

Maybe if I make up enough of these little moments, I can look back and convince even myself that they are real. I know they are effective in snowing my friends. They are always telling me how happy for me they are seeing me out doing stuff, apparently living a charmed life and such. I'm sure the folks at SSD will, likewise, be glad that I've made their case for them with all of this faked "evidence" of good times being had by me, a clinically depressed person. 

To which I say, "So what." I'll be dead before too long anyway. 

Should I actually prove to be living the life of a capable, non-depressed person someday, I will be the first to shout, "Hallelujah! I'm cured!" But what the pictures and the cute vignettes don't show is the 23 hours of the day when I don't go out of the house, barely lift myself out of my chair and hope for nightfall, so I can sleep away the pain for a few hours. They don't show me clutching my gut or peering at my weird eyeball in the mirror or staring listlessly for hours at the TV screen wishing my life could be any of 8 billion people's but mine. 

OK, that last part's not true. I'm smart enough to realize that other people have it more fucked than I do. A certain percentage of them anyway. And ultimately, we are all fucked. We will all get old and infirm, die and decompose, are remembered for a while, then gradually fade into oblivion.

Alright, I have things to distract myself with today. I have breakfast and caffeine and cannabis to take me through the first part of the day, after which I will ultimately feel worse. But it's my once a week routine and it used to make me feel good, so I'm still pushing that car. I will try to play my guitar, though I know my skill level is not improving. The videos and recordings prove that (when I can even get the technology to kind of work enough to make them).

In other news, the LED came back on again after a few weeks or months of inactivity. I don't know what Sharon has in mind. I think she's trying to kick start me. I appreciate that. I haven't had a woman around to bitch at me since she's been gone and I apparently really need that in my life. 

I think she wants me to plant a garden or something. I've been resisting that because I wanted to keep my options open this summer for travel. But with the quarantine and such, I think I'll be tethered here anyway, so I may as well dig in. A garden would go a long way toward improving my outdoor to indoor, vertical to horizontal time spent ratio. 

And if I keel over outside where the buzzards can spot me, so much the better. Won't stink up the house. The downside, my cats won't be able to feast on my eyeballs, and I know they've been looking forward to that.