It was too damp and cold to go up on the roof
this morning, but I went anyway. I put on a sweater and a nylon windbreaker and
walked through the chapter house to the stairway that leads up the back wall of
the building to the top portions of the house and the attic. I climbed the
ladder in the attic, opened the trap door and swung my leg out and up over the
roof peak. Sliding along the shingles toward the front edge of the building my
jeans soaked up the moisture from the roof. By then I was thoroughly cold.
You know, I would have thought by this time in my life that nothing would bother me. I’m in relatively good health, but let’s face it; my name is coming around on the Grim Reaper’s Rolodex sooner than later. Given that, why sweat the little stuff? Not like my Uncle Harry, whose last words on his deathbed were to wonder if he should put the snow tires on early this year.
Death is not a comfort unless you are in pain. Death is the ultimate disappointment, even if something good is coming afterward. And who knows for sure?
I don’t want to grow old and miserable and start losing my body parts, having them removed and treated like they are something awful, put in special red containers as if they are radioactive. Or lay forever on a bed waiting for a person whose language I can’t understand to come and let me move my bowels. So I pray for lightning. I figure I can take 14 milliseconds of being flash fried and then it will be all over. I used to say I’d sign up for double the cooking time if it would get me out of Purgatory. But it turns out I’ve been saved from Purgatory by a commission of bureaucrats at Central Headquarters in Rome. That’s a pretty neat trick for a committee. Maybe next they will vote to end world hunger.
I don’t want to face what may be waiting for me
on the other side of death's door. Dead relatives to whom I hardly waved
goodbye as they were climbing on that Glory Train. I won’t be long, Mom … just
going off to Africa for a while. The woman in the Kenyan village I denied
asylum on the day before she was hacked up with a machete like a side of beef. And
the man and woman I killed in Pennsylvania. I didn’t kill them. I didn’t kill
them. I didn’t! But I left them. And
they died.
I come up here on the peak half hoping to offer myself up as a lightning rod. Or maybe I’ll lean just a tiny bit too far out over the edge, lose my balance and take the Express down to the hereafter, the train that doesn’t stop at the suffering part of life’s ending. But then I see that snowy field in Pennsylvania and their hands raised, begging for help and I don’t want to go to the other side. I’m running, running … grabbing at the snow. I want to live. My mind comes back to the present and I quickly lean back from the edge of the roof and stare up at the darkening sky. When the vertigo passes, I inch my way back down the peak, down the ladder and down the stairs. Always backing down.
I come up here on the peak half hoping to offer myself up as a lightning rod. Or maybe I’ll lean just a tiny bit too far out over the edge, lose my balance and take the Express down to the hereafter, the train that doesn’t stop at the suffering part of life’s ending. But then I see that snowy field in Pennsylvania and their hands raised, begging for help and I don’t want to go to the other side. I’m running, running … grabbing at the snow. I want to live. My mind comes back to the present and I quickly lean back from the edge of the roof and stare up at the darkening sky. When the vertigo passes, I inch my way back down the peak, down the ladder and down the stairs. Always backing down.
Hootie and the Blowfish - Running From An Angel
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