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Michael Ketchek |
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Danny Toasts Death My father died last year in a nursing home, his mind, which had designed award winning bridges and played a chess master to a draw once, more shriveled, by Alzheimer's, than his 92 year old body. My friend's failing mother shits herself as she staggers down the hallway in search of the distant toilet, in her home of fifty years. Another friend, his father just died in a hospital a few weeks after finding out his body was full of more cancerous holes than the doctors had ever counted in one man. At the Irish wake after many toasts to his memory, his youngest son Danny, now over thirty years old, raised his glass and said, "I want to die when I'm 95, by being shot by her angry husband as I try and climb out the window." All of us men, all us sons of aged or dead fathers, toasted this bravado. Not believing, but still reveling in the thought that ours might be a romantic and not decrepit death. (Published in Chiron Review) The Real Talk I've always wanted to say something real, something other than chit chat about feelings and relationships or is some flutist showing genuine emotion or just flaunting his technical skills. I've always wanted to say something with gravitas, I mean real gravitas, like, "hurry a tornado is approaching. Quick, get in the storm cellar." Paul Revere is my hero with his not a word wasted warning, "the Redcoats are coming." Four words that sent the colonies on the road to independence. Now that's saying something. That's the opposite of words that are like cappuccino froth, beautiful, but as empty as the pretty people drinking it in. |