Living End

A boy wonders what he wants to be

The Living End

Tim Buckley

©2013

 

Peter, what do you want to be when you die?" John asked me as we strolled through the woods, on our way to nowhere in particular.  John and I are good friends, and he's an o.k. guy, but his imagination is slightly bent: He has an obsession with death.

            "We've been over this more times than I've jumped over you playing 'leap frog,' I replied wearily. "When are you going to stop worrying about your dead body and…"

            "Yeah, I know, but listen to this one…"

            "Not again!" I moaned. So far, John has wanted to be cremated and put into a kaleidoscope, which would add the missing color from his life; also, he imagined his ashes in an ant farm. The ants, he reasoned, could put him to a far better purpose dead than he had alive; and, since I make ceramics, he thought it neat if I would use his remains to cast a small statue of himself.  Certainly we could then eulogize him as a "monument among men" without lying.

            "…I thought I'd like to be cremated," John continued, adding nothing new as yet, "and my ashes put into one-a-those, uh, you know, one-a-those glass balls with liquid inside that you shake up to make the snow fly."

            "A snow globe?"

            Yeah, that's it! And I want my picture put in it with my ashes--right in the ball's center--so you can shake me up and I'll float around myself!"

            "Rather self-centered, don't you think, John?"

            "Or, maybe…"

            "That's enough!" I yelled. "Look, John, you have to add color to your life while you're ALIVE,   'cause you can't appreciate it when you're dead.  And if you don't make something from your life while ALIVE, no ant can do it for you dead; finally, John, it's not a statue that makes a man great, but the man's LIFE that earned him the statue. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

            "Uh, yeah, but, what about the snow globe with me and my picture in it?"

            "That's a good idea, go for it." 

John's smile lit the trail as we headed towards our goal.

 

 

 

Reviews

[Marie]

I thik John has some great ideas.