The rumors of my death are somewhat exaggerated
19 August 2011
In the spirit of butchering my favorite author’s quote, the rumors of my death really are exaggerated. As far as I know.
I did check with The Prince Consort this morning.
Being no more obsessive than usual, I automated a daily Google search for internet mentions of my name. Dead certain someone would steal one of the short stories or essays I’ve published in the dim past. Because all plagiarists leave the original author’s name on the stolen work. Yeah, the logic was not quite there. But I’ve never been a faithful subscriber to logic. And always a devotee to paranoia.
Until today nothing in the Google searches.Today an obituary with my name popped up.
The Prince Consort swears he has no plans, but he did mention I might be interested in a vacation trip to Aruba, and he’d need a minute to call the life insurance company. Yeah, well, two can play that game.
Assuming the obituary is not about me, I started to wonder what would be in mine. Surely they’d use a good photo from that fifteen minutes in college where I looked not half bad. Would I be having a big funeral, which I have instructed my family I DO NOT want? Or a grand wake. Which I’m all in favor of. But if we’re going to do that, let’s do it now before I’m just the guest of honor in an urn or two.
Maybe I should write my own glowing praise.
She was a good wife and mother. Having never poisoned her family with her cooking. At least not that can be proven. She kept a clean house, as defined by getting out the old baby diaper and swiping at the furniture just before the ‘dust me’ messages completely covered immobile surfaces. As well as dusting some of the semi-mobile surfaces asleep in front of the TV, again.
She was a good and faithful servant to the horde of cats who came through her life. Mostly getting the litter box management and food dosages correct. Although the reliance on dry kibble instead of Angus beef liver could have been improved.
She dressed okay. Relying on ‘classic’ to give her a pass on wearing the same favorite jacket for decades. Hair was pretty okay, although The Prince Consort did ask if she knew the hair in the back was a Lot darker than the ‘natural’ blonde in the front. Of course she knew. Her theory being that any hair that was not gray was going to get shown off, a lot.
She was a writer who despite years of resistance by a plethora of editors and agents, went ahead and plagued the world with her blog. Where she hoped she could share a view of the world that brought just a little light into someone else’s day.
She opted for cremation with ashes spread somewhere, because she was darn well NOT going to go through “Do you have a larger size?” with an urn.
Kath
