Everything around me lately seems to deal with death: my estranged sister-in-law died about three weeks ago, a friend from Point Reyes died last week and a day ago my last living Aunt died. Most of the books I read have as their subject death or someone dying or the effects of death on everyone else around the dead person. It seems everything I pick up is now talking about death. Either death itself or books about death or such mundane things like the death of the bacon fad. (Who knew bacon was a fad? I knew it was, months ago, the hot new food thing, but a fad? Hasn't bacon been around long enough to NOT be a fad?) Or the sad death of vodka drinks (oh, who cares about that?) or the death of hope in the age of anxiety or live oak death or the death of the sitcom (oh, we can only hope) or so many other deaths, on and on and on.
But death isn't something to mock. (Well, except the death of stupid cocktails like the Cosmo. I think it's fine to mock that sort of death.) Death is probably the best/worst subject ever. It can prompt hours of conversation or it can stop a conversation in its tracks in a heartbeat. (Or stop a heartbeat in its tracks, but that's another facet of death that we will discuss later.) Everyone dies, so everyone is interested in Death with a capital D. But since everyone dies, no one really wants to talk about it. What a conundrum. "I love you to death." Endearing. "I love you. You die." Frightening. See what I mean. Best/worst, it can go either way.
And it does go many ways. There is so much more to say about death and yet, in some ways, so little. You die. End of life sentence.
more to follow......
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