This might be a bit depressing. I therefore want you to imagine a cute puppy wagging it’s little tail and licking your nose. Are you doing that? Good. I’m here today to talk about death. Keep thinking puppy and it’ll be fine...
The reality has been a tad disappointing. Rather than losing at the roulette wheel in Monaco, I find myself looking at a tired bloke in the mirror losing his hair, whilst wondering why my hip hurts but I’m not ‘hip’, and how is it possible to have indigestion yet again?
Getting old sucks. Yes, there is wisdom. There’s that lovely bit of looking at teenagers and thinking, hah! I made that mistake, you’re going to regret that in the morning, sunshine. The problem is, you secretly still want to be them. Still, there are compensations – you can listen to decent music, rather than having to pretend you like everything on Radio 1, it’s OK to go to bed not long after 10, and you mostly know when to take a breather from drinking before it all gets messy. I know some exception to that rule, though. There’s none of that street talk to cope with either, innit, yo, s’up blood. 4real.
What really sucks is death. As a kid, all my Grandparents died (it had nothing to do with me, honest), whilst I was still pre-teens. Deeply sad, but hey – they were old, right? As a youngster, you bounce back.
The problem is, as you get older, each death takes that bit longer to bounce back from, until eventually you find yourself a little less cheery and joyful, a little more sanguine and a whole load mortal.
It certainly doesn’t have to be just reserved to those close to you. In the space of a few years, I lost my Father, and was shocked by the deaths of Freddie Mercury and Ayrton Senna. I knew neither of the latter, but was huge fans of all three.
As time goes on, more people you remember from your youth start to trickle away – My Mum has gone and, increasingly, TV and music stars from the good old days of your childhood start to go, most recently from my perspective was Davy Jones. And now one of our elderly neighbours seems to be slipping away from us.*
I know it’s inevitable (unless that stuff growing in the cellar really does have regenerative powers like the pixie told me), but it still sucks more that Tele Savalas with a catering size pack of lollipops, right? If you happen to have the comfort of religion (in which case this is just the bit you have to put up with before the Good Stuff), then it’s probably not such a worry. Mind you, I’ve seen some pretty sad people who do Believe, so it’s hard to tell.
So, I should try and follow my own advice. Life’s too damn short to put up with stupidity, rudeness and all of life’s irritations and complications. You can’t avoid all of them, and some days it feels like they’re being fired out of a canon at you as you wade hopelessly through a field of treacle whilst N-Dubz songs are played at full volume, but grab hold of those little moments of happiness and joy, and cherish them.
You never know how long you’ve got left.
(*Between writing this post and putting it up on Big Blogger, I’ve discovered that my neighbour has passed away. RIP Hazel. I promise I’ll try and keep the alleyway at the back of our terrace tidy, like it should be.)
Many thanks for visiting my blog here, and helping me to get through to the last 7. This was a largely cheerless post, wasn’t it? Sorry about that. I blame Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” album. Brilliant stuff, but not exactly cheery blog-post inducing. I’ll get back to the random silliness and ranting as soon as possible. I’m feeling a bit irritated about all the road works, actually...
This blog post appeared yesterday as an entry in the North West Evening Mail's "Big Blogger" competition. Do me a favour - click on this link to view it on their website, please? Thanks to your clicks, I've made it through to the last 7. Another person gets eliminated next Monday... Will it be me this time..?
(More and more and more ELO is still filling my brain, courtesy of that Argentinian radio show I mentioned. Lovely.)
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