death and the bacon sandwich
Death comes for us all. Some of us await it, some of us fear it, all of us experience it at some point, whether we resist it or not. Death is all around us; it’s in the leaves on the tree turning such beautiful colors while reminding us that everything dies, it’s on our highways as our tires bump over dead skunks and possums, its shadow hangs over you every time you pass a hospital or senior citizen housing. And lord knows it’s all over our entertainment choices, in our movies and books and tv shows.
There are so many ways to die it’s a wonder we don’t die at a more alarming rate. I mean, 56 million people die a year and that seems like a drop in the bucket given all the ample opportunities death has to appear grinning in front of you like a mad door to door salesman. Knock knock. Who’s there? Death. Death who? Death comes for us all bahahahaha!
Some of us lay awake at night thinking about death. We obsess about it. We think about car accidents and plane crashes, industrial mishaps and lightning bolts, murder and disease. We know a laundry list of ways you can meet your death and we add to it every night, a checklist of ghoulish proportions tucked away in our brains that rustles us awake at 3am, filled with anxiety. Will it be today? Tomorrow? 30 years from now? We live our lives with breath held in anticipation of Death’s knock on the door.
Others are more blasé about it, wandering through life with a deep shrug of the shoulders at the mention of inevitable death. “It’s part of life,” they say and move on to their next task. These are the people who buy life insurance, who purchase cemetery plots in idyllic cemeteries, who plan ahead for their ultimate demise without so much as a wisp of anxiety.
It doesn’t really matter how you handle the specter of death while you are alive, it’s going to come for you no matter what and odds are you are not going to die peacefully in your sleep at 95 like you want to. So let’s not fool ourselves here: our time on earth is finite and our personal end time can come at any moment.
The thing about living is you want to do it well. You want to enjoy the hell out of it because who knows when you are going to cease to exist? So in between the office meetings and back to school nights and church socials and sitting in the car dealership for two hours, we should stuff our souls full of life, and stuff our bellies full of processed meats and cheeses and eggs and coffee and carbs because everything has the potential to kill you. Sunshine can kill you. Really, if sunshine can kill you what weapon do you have in the war against death? None. You can diet and exercise and get enough sleep and take your medications but none of that is going to keep Death from playing that knock-knock joke on you eventually, so why aren’t you maximizing your enjoyment of life before you’re saying “death who?” and collapsing in your office chair in the middle of filling out an expense report?
Processed meats can kill you? So can everything else. Life itself will kill you. Everything you eat, every electronic device you use, every car you get into, every step outside into the elements, it all has the potential to end your life. And end your life will, at some unsuspecting time in an unsuspecting place, or maybe you’ll be on your deathbed surrounded by relatives and you’ll wonder things like why did you spend so much time at the office and why didn’t you ride that roller coaster and why did you ever end that relationship and why the hell didn’t you eat more salami sandwiches.
Remember that somewhat recent adage of “don’t forget your sunscreen?” Screw that. My new adage to live and die by is “don’t forget your bacon.”
Knock knock?
Who’s there?
Death.
Hold on, let me finish this sausage gravy biscuit. Man, that was fucking delicious. Ok, let’s go.
