Death and... - Chris Callaghan

There is a yawning hole after those three ellipses that my brain keeps filling in with the expected word, taxes.

For one reason or another I hadn’t paid any of my estimated tax payments for 2008 which is why I had to drive to the other side of town to my accountant Amy’s office and write a whopping check to the IRS yesterday. Excuse me; make that the ‘United States Treasury.’

“Who do they think they’re kidding?” I mumbled to Amy.

“The government actually did a study,” Amy said, “and discovered that writing checks out to the IRS made people furious, but if they wrote the check to the US Treasury, it didn’t piss them off so much.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I said as I tore up the check I’d just written IRS on and tried again. I was still furious about having to give the government so much of my hard earned money, and on top of that I couldn’t remember how to spell treasury. “I don’t care what they call it, I’m still pissed,” I said.

“I agree,” Amy laughed. “It’s still the same old pot no matter what label they stick on it.”

I left Amy’s office with two meager consolations, one was I’d had the money to cover the check and the other was I wouldn’t have to face it again for another twelve months.

So today I’m thinking more of death than taxes. Right next to Buddha and Kwan Yin on my altar is a three inch by seven inch wooden box that holds exactly one cup of my mother’s ashes. I didn’t get to say good by to her just before she died or after. I wonder if the lump of crystals that dementia built at the base of her brain are in that box too, Alzheimer anthrax waiting to pop out and get into my brain.

I know the ashes are sealed in a zip lock baggie, but I still don’t open the lid. I keep putting amulets on the top of the box: sage sticks, earth crystals, tiny glass hearts and angels. They’re all there to keep the boogie man of inherited mental illness at bay. Do these offerings make me feel any better? Mostly yes.

But sometimes when I can’t think of a word I want, or where I left my keys, or if I really did lock the front door, I worry. I pat my head praying that there’s no crystals growing at the base of my brain and reassuring myself that whatever short term memory loss I get now and then is normal.

See, I don’t really fear dying so much, what terrifies me is dying crazy like her.