Most of my favorite people are already dead, and that’s going to get worse

I was watching Frank Zappa perform, thinking about what a genius he was, and that’s not a word I bandy about often. He was at worst a once in a century talent, at best? once in a thousand years? Once in 10,000, but only if we had better musical recordings that old. But he’s dead, he’s been dead for 29 years, 30 in December. Most of my life he’s been dead.

He’s in the pile of people that coexisted with me briefly, but was dead before I was aware of them. I didn’t get around to learning about him until at best 2011,17 years on after his death. There are some of those that were narrow, like Logan Whitehurst who died in 2006… I’m not actually sure of when I became aware of him, he’s so knit into my personality

Then there are those that were alive while I was aware of them, like Kurt Vonnegut, but I never met them. This brings up the most regret…. if only I could have met them, it would be really nice to know more people while they’re still alive.

but all my grandparents and their siblings are dead. About 1/3rd of my uncles are dead… Sooner or later I’m going to lose a cousin, I might have already. See, one dropped off the map, and she could be dead.

but I’m at the point in my life I’ve known so many people, I can’t keep up with replacing the ones that die while I’m aware of it. My 5th grade English teacher died. It’s just, the world is poorer for losing them. I wonder who else that is true of, it’s so much easier to say when someone is dead than when they are alive.

But then there are people that I’m borderline glad they’re dead, Pat Robinson passed recently, awful bigot got way too many years. But even so, someone must miss him.

That’s part of what keeps me here, because I’d rather exist unexceptional than be a blank space where I once was. That’s the only afterlife I really believe in, the gap we leave by not being there. At the same time, so many people being gone, never to add another work to make life more tolerable…. sometimes it pulls me towards death.

Most of the people I like are dead, and I like myself, so sooner or later the difference will have to collapse.

But I come from long lived stock. Outside of addiction, people in my family live into their 90s. Which means for another decade yet I’ll have more life ahead of me than is behind me…. And the longer I last, the more people will miss me…. so it’s not necessarily kinder to stay alive. I’m finally old enough people have stopped expecting a bright future out of me, and that’s a relief. I wonder what it’s like to be at an age that even still being alive is more than people expect….

then again, I’m at that age now with myself. If I’d had my way, I’d be long dead. Which is why my expectations on myself are so low; staying alive was more than I thought I had in me.

I’m sincerely jealous of people who death surprises. That sounds wonderful, being too busy with life to think about your expiration date and then pop, dead. Heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, natural disasters…… that’s the Cadillac of death

and I don’t mean a 2010 Escalade, crime against nature that is, no I mean a 1955 El Dorado…. smooth as silk, built like a boat, the original definition of an awesome convertible.

Warren Zevon was another one who was gone before I knew about him, he sings about death a lot. Buddy when I die, put my body in the back, take me to the junkyard with my Cadillac (though in my case it would be my Ford  1996 F250).