Accidental Death
Why
this minute? we ask.
Why
the shock of this kitchen
table
for him to slump over,
after
a long walk on a winter morning
with
his favorite dog and the woman
he
has loved for sixty years?
Why
on this rainbowed evening,
on
this stretch of grass-fringed highway
does
a red car leap across gravel
to
fly from oblivious youth
into
a sturdy fence post?
Why
his ischemia, her tumor,
this
gunshot, that slip-and-fall?
Why
them, why now?
Our
deaths are murder mysteries,
stuff
any novelist would treasure,
but
most of us refuse to read
as
pot-boilers of sudden demise.
Instead,
we hide the bodies.
At
austere funerals, we rewrite
grisly
finishes into eulogies
of
souls whose time had come.
How
much more entertaining
it
would be to stretch the truth,
embellish
suspenseful moments,
add
new details, revel in the ironic
twists
of fate that strike us down.
Building
suspense, we could withhold
the
name of the one we mourn
in
our storied eulogy for those gathered,
so
that filing past casket and raconteur,
they,
like satisfied paperback readers,
could
be delighted by the surprise
endings.
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