Life’s a shabby subterfuge....

I have pet topics on which my thoughts converge every now and then. Funerals are one of them - probably because I attend one every couple of months or so. I went to one yesterday. She was a doctor - this caring successful wife, mother, sister, friend and yoga teacher. Her husband is a doctor and her three daughters are all doctors. A family of five doctors and yet.....

I think of what I want to say to my kids when I am no more. I think of what I want hubby to agonise over when I am no more. But this first.....



It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

— JOHN UPDIKE