Wanda Morrow Clevenger

This isn’t a suicide note, but you can borrow it if you want


I’m just saying, neither of us should draw breath.  If all had gone as expected we’d be the terminally late to supper Mr. and Mrs.  And for the record, I don’t want to be pickled, put on display and locked in a box six feet under.  Cemeteries are for ghouls and the over-eyelined Goths.  But that whole pod-people that compost and grow into a tree is too god awful ghoulish too.  Yeah boy, bury Ma and Pa Pod in the back yard and wait for something to come creeping out of the sod.  You’re gonna have to hire a backhoe for the job, get all kinds of government permits and with the compost pod prep you won’t save any money in the long run, son. Death is Wall Street—they’re lining up to wrangle what’s left out of your blue fingers.  Nope, put my ashes in a wind chime, one that isn’t too tinny or clangy and hang it in a normal tree.  One from the nursery that flowers.  One with squirrels.

And just because we’re breathing and the kitchen clock is ticking and the laundry is sloshing and I’m typing, don’t think either of us beat the odds; the two aren’t necessarily attached at the liver.  Odds are just that, what you’re left with when the doctors are in way over their skill set.

I’m sick to death (pun intended if you want) of the doctors saying I beat the odds while shaking their baffled heads ever so noticeably.  I know they’re thinking one in a million effing lucky old broad, or worse, some kind of miracle (which truly pisses me off).  There were no miracles.  Not in my hospital rooms.  Not in his.  Pure putrefied cause and effect.

In my case, since there was no wage loss I was worth more dead than alive.

In his case, a signature was required to guarantee we’ll never tell the truth.  The whole truth.  The putrefied cause and effect truth.

No, this isn’t a suicide note.  Don’t anyone panic and order a Magnolia.  I’m not planning on swallowing a bottle of Ativan because I’m told I’m worth more dead than alive.  That’s something I should’ve suspected from the start.




Wanda Morrow Clevenger is a Carlinville, Illinois, native.  Her bios are becoming increasingly more boring.  She gets a pedicure once a month.  This month she went with red.  Her magazine-type blog updated at erratic discretion: http://wlc-wlcblog.blogspot.com/



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