My Expiration Date Has Arrived

This is probably my last blog entry. I am on my deathbed and probably will not last out the day. Well, not actually on my deathbed right at this moment. I was a few moments ago but I couldn't sleep and had to get up.

My head is filled with snot, and I have a headache, and my chest wheezes and whirs and makes gurgly sounds. I'm pretty sure I will expire in a few short hours.

It's the fault of that tree that fell on my house. Since I work in Project Management, I brought my intensive management skills to bear to resolving the issue. Yes, yes. My wife called in a tree expert to get rid of the damn tree. Except she, as well as anyone else, failed to realize that their efforts to demolish the tree pissed the tree off. It told the other trees and the ragweed, whatever the hell that is, to all spit pollen at me. That means that I am pollinated which I guess is sort-of like being pregnant except that biologically I'm inpregnable, so my body reacts as it only can -- violent allergic death throws. That is my expert medical opinion and my wife agrees with me. At least she rolled her eyes and walked away, which is the same thing. I think my expiration date is two hours from now.

Now that death is looming, I am having second thoughts about cremation. I mean, how do they really know that you don't feel anything after you die? Yeah, all the evidence suggests that you can't feel anything...but do they really know? Maybe I'll just have them bury me....with a long straw sticking out of the ground.

I don't fear death. If you imagine a muscular Spartacus standing strongly atop a hill with a sword in hand facing hordes of deadly things, that is me. Okay, maybe a pudgy Spartacus with a balding head with snot draining from his nose.....but otherwise, just like Spartacus. I've accomplished what I set out to do on this earth. I raised two kids to be better than me, so what more could one ask for? True, my plans to be an astronaut fell through and they never did answer my written application to be fighter pilot, but I've conducted an orchestra, taught school, climbed mountains, had a successful business career (just don't try to confirm this with my boss), and written one-half chapter of a thirty-two chapter book. I've studied music theory and have been a percussionist in jazz groups, bands, and orchestras. I've taken piano lessons but I admit I flunked Sight Singing. (It's not my fault. To be a Music Director, some idiot somewhere decided that you need to be able to sing music in front of you so that while standing in front of your orchestra you will be able to sing a passage of music to show how it is supposed to sound, which is the stupidest idea I ever heard. So you had to take a Sight Singing class and none of us knew exactly what that was and when we got into class, the teacher thrust a piece of sheet music in front of a young lass of delicate constitution and told her to sing what was on the page - right there in front of everyone. She looked at the music, looked at the instructor, her hands shook, tears welled up in her eyes, and she burst out crying. It was right then and there that I took matters into my own hands and refused to attend another class.)

All in all I've had a remarkable life and I am ready to depart. I've even flown over the North Atlantic bombing the ocean with sonobuoys to search out evil submarines destined to do harm to America - even though I wasn't supposed to do that because I was part of the NATO Band, but I had some good friends that flew anti-submarine patrol and they would slip me on board flights - which confirms everything. I went the extra mile to protect our shores on my own time! That image of Spartacus comes to mind, doesn't it?

So my friends, now is the time to stop investing in Puffs Tissue (with lanolin). As I fade away, their stock is going to plummet. I could probably hurry this whole thing up by simply going out in a field of pollen and letting death overtake me.

So my expiration date has arrived.

Eulogy (I'm saving you the trouble): Here lies Jerry....in the casket with the straw. He mostly didn't know what he was talking about and he got most things wrong but you could depend on him to empty the dishwasher each and every time that it needed it. We will remember Jerry - one or two will even remember him fondly. He sniffed himself to death.