The Undead

Well, glory hallelujah. This is the weekend I iron each year. If Jesus can get up out of the grave, I can dig the iron out of storage, put a towel on the cabinet, and reacquaint myself with the can of spray starch I purchased as part of my Going To College kit in 1982. It's also the weekend I wear The Suit. I don't take it to the dry cleaners anymore. I've finally figured out that by this time next year, whatever smells jumped on it will have faded.

I have to skip the Big Family Get Together this year. Too many command performances, too little Tom to go around. So I'll spend Easter relatively alone (meaning without relatives) and rest easy in May knowing there are no rotting, undiscovered though colorful eggs somewhere in my backyard. Besides, I found out last year that they aren't even doing the real Family Easter Egg Hunt anymore. They're doing a Plastic Egg Hunt. It's the Fake Christmas Tree of Easter. And it's a shonda.

Last year, I busted my hump hiding plastic eggs so well that even I couldn't find them again. They were filled. Some had candy, and a LOT of them had money. It was like Easter Gelt. Somewhere, Jesus was having a religious crisis. We never had money in our Easter Eggs. We had egg in our eggs. Back in the olden days, if you opened your egg, you were committed to eating it or finding someone who would. And I don't care for eggs. I just liked the pretty colors. Kind of like the retarded kid at the city-wide Easter Egg Hunt. Eat one? No thanks. But can we go shopping for shoes to match?

Easter makes me think of things that never die: Judy Garland music, Meatloaf's two songs, Sinatra, Hepburn...the classics. Then we have the new class of immortals: Joan Rivers, Anna Nicole, Cher.... The new class is immortal not due to greatness, but because they are no longer biodegradable. They will live forever because there's not much left of them that can decay.

I'm not thrilled about the notion of death, but I accept its inevitability....grudgingly. In a recent discussion about DNR orders, I made it clear that I most certainly want to be resuscitated. I don't want to die from a temporary corporeal glitch that a little paddling might fix. And I'm convinced that the day they pull my plug, CNN will break the news that they found my cure. So I have tattooed my chest with the words: Paddles Go Here. More specifically, I have asked to be plugged in and electrified just shy of electrocution, if they think it will help. Use me as a generator, if you want. Put a plant in my mouth and consider me decor. I don't care.

It's not that I'm afraid to meet my maker. I'd just like to be the last one to do so, thank you very much.

So R, by all means, friggin' R! If I'm in a permanent vegetative state where I have no feeling, no thoughts, no pain, etc., then I promise I won't mind. Just keep me well-drugged and know that I'm silently enjoying my high. If and when I open my eyes, consider that a sign that I'm ready to cope again. And send me to one of the better rehabs. The ones where you can fill an autograph book. If I have to detox, I'd like something I can sell on eBay in return.

I believe, with the Christian masses, (because I am nothing if not Christian), that the dead will rise some day to spend eternity knitting and playing euchre in very nice digs in heaven. How nice.

Like Mr. Beatty said - more or less - "I can wait."