Thoughts with Richard Bleil
This Christmas was not easy for me. Christmas never is because I find it such a lonely time, but this year was really bad for other reasons. Yesterday (although just a few minutes ago as I write this) I published an article arguing that people should take responsibility for their own actions, and I’m no different. It would be hypocritical of me to try to blame others for my loneliness, when the fact is that it’s my own damned fault, and I accept that. I’m not sure why, though. My friends would tell me that they like me and want me around them and would have invited me (some actually did) to their celebrations. Maybe I just don’t have the knowledge of how to attract and keep a romantic partner (different from the friends I have), or maybe I’m afraid of intimacy. But whatever the problem is, the reality is that I’m alone, and it is my fault.
Whatever the reason, being alone comes with its own special set of hazards. My Christmas was an example of how these hazards can accumulate. Since I had no plans to celebrate, Christmas was a normal day for me, and as it fell on a Sunday, it also happened to have fallen on my usual laundry day. So, of course, I decided to “celebrate” as I would any other Sunday, by doing my laundry.
Carrying my bag of dirty laundry, the day started off with me slipping on the stairs and falling down them, gravity pulling me all the way down hitting each stair on the way. My reflexes are still pretty good and I managed to avoid hitting my head, but it was excessively painful, and for somebody my age also very dangerous.
At the bottom of the stairs, I didn’t move for fifteen or twenty minutes. Waiting for the pain to subside a bit before attempting to stand, I lamented my fate and realized that the fall could have been very serious, resulting (it did not) in broken bones or even death. I was still and discombobulated much like the laundry in my bag when I realized that what I was seeing was very likely the future demise of the once glorious me.
Recently I purchased one of those rings that monitors your vitals. It tells you your sleep cycles, respiration and heart variabilities and such. My favorite joke is that having purchased it, the morgue has made a trip to my house two or three times a week. Of course, that’s not really how it works. And, no, I won’t get one of those buttons that you push in case of an emergency. It would end up on a table somewhere and well out of reach when I actually need it. I wrote a short story about the scenario of my dying unexpectedly. Perhaps that was prophetic. I saw myself dying here at home, my cat happily eating my face as my corpse rots away. Perhaps another fall, or a heart attack, but some kind of lonely death where nobody notices.
My uncle died as such. Nobody had heard from him in quite a long time, which was really not a surprise because, much like me, and much like my dad, he lived alone and rarely reached out to others. My uncle went to check on him. A former police officer, he knew what happened even before entering the premises. Flies had accumulated around the edges of the door and windows desperate to get in to find that source of rotting flesh. Sure enough, he died in the living room, his body decomposed to the point where they had to literally scrape it off of the floor.
Eventually, I tried to move, one limb at a time. I managed to stand, unsteady on my feet (and still feeling the pain as I write this), and drag my laundry bag to the laundry room. Of course, if you recall the Christmas miracle storm, my pipes were frozen, so I got to spend the day trying to thaw them. Eventually I succeeded and could do my Christmas laundry.
And when this happens (not if), I honestly don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me (even now as I write and publish this). This is the life I deserve, the life I’ve built for myself. When I do die, I hope people will think of what joy I brought to them, and how I enriched their lives. I honestly don’t want mourners in my funeral. Heck, make it a roast. There is nothing that can be done to bring me back once I’m gone, so there’s no point in mourning me. Just think of me fondly, and piss on my grave.
Bleil's Banter 