Waiting rooms are usually somber.
That is true of most hospitals
and every mortuary.
It isn’t like we need
to be prepared for what
might happen next.
In the hospital the surgeon,
at the direction of lawyers,
has given us the worst case.
In the mortuary we are certain
the departed was no saint
so resurrection is out of the picture.
I’m not saying they should
be joyous or raucous, but
actually why not?
I realize now just
how old I have gotten,
no laughing any longer
at the old men always
tucking pills into a sorter
neatly marked by day and time,
for I now do my own
weekly, the number of pills
seeming to propogate by month.
I suppose it is time
to begin working in earnest
on the playlist for my funeral.
I’ll be damned if I
will have an organist
and somber melodies
although I may be
damned regardless, but
that is something beyond me.
It will be a long list,
but you can suffer for a bit,
and you know that I will conclude
with my favorite songs
in their full jam band version
by the Grateful Dead.
an old writer and his words 