Death death death: An incomplete reflection

My mother phoned the other day to let me know that a woman — who probably was marginally mean to me in high school — died of a brain aneurism in her sleep last weekend. The woman was only one year older than me. So I am thinking about death. Generically and specifically. This works quite well with my vivid imagination. One hundred cancers march through my body and one hundred last words are meticulously rehearsed. The game plan for what I would do if I had six months to live spirals and cascades along the inside of my mind’s eye. But it’s all so hilarious. Not the specific death, not my death exactly, but all death and all imagination of death. I grew up with ghost stories, urban legends, and Roald Dahl. Gruesome death and laughter intermingled. Black humour, the macabre: they scour along the outside edges of my joints and make clean and close that thing we are taught to fear and avoid and ignore. At best, accept with a straight spine. I don’t want to dance with Death, but I love his clackety bones. Personified, anthropomorphized, top hat and tails and tappety cane. We are el día de los muertos. I hope to wear a sequined gown and tango to my death.