Chatting With Death

Death knocked on my door just a bit after sunrise today. He’s been knocking every morning since I was born, but I had not seen him in such a long time that I felt honored by the visit.

He seemed a bit melancholy as he glided effortlessly toward the dining room, even a bit more lugubrious as we chatted around cups of black cinnamon tea. I asked why he carried such hunched shoulders, and rasped such languished sighs from deep within his cowl. He said it was because there was no longer any fun in collecting the dead.

“There’s far less dignity these days,” he said. “Too many kill without remorse, and too many die long before I’m ready to collect them. It used to be old age,  sickness, and war were the only real reasons for my efforts, and in war it was just a handful of ignorant savages who thought it honorable to kill and die for causes that, centuries later, no longer meant anything. But now, war takes everyone… the ignorant, but also innocent women and children. The killers bomb markets, even schools, and spray bullets into peaceful gatherings. War is no longer designated to a particular plot of land where armies meet. The world has become a battlefield. Do you know how many kids die from gunshots on the streets of Detroit, Miami, Berkeley, Oakland… ?"

And in impoverished countries, people die from tainted water. In America, more people now die from drug overdoses than from automobile wrecks or heart disease. Too many people die for all the wrong reasons.”

We sat silently, simply enjoying one another’s company during the last few minutes of his visit. As he got up to leave, Death thanked me for not being afraid of him.

“What’s to be afraid of,” I asked. “There is a fate more scary than death. It’s called life.”