Lingchi

Youth has its advantages, and one is it’s conception of dying. The young picture themselves washing the car, vacuuming the carpet, hoeing the garden, making love, when suddenly an artery erupts, or someone runs a red light and they are gone. Or rogue cells invade, and the end soon follows. Or amid a peaceful dream breathing stops, no explanation, no morning sun. Or, likely, they ignore such thoughts and bask in perceived immortality. But for their elders the Reaper is always at their elbow, an unwanted companion, and to consider their methodical destruction is to think of lingchi, death by a thousand cuts. Little by gruesome little, parts of their bodies on whose existence they never dwelled begin to fail them, a kidney here, a liver there, a mind once sharp, a heart or lung. First they can no longer wash the car, or vacuum the carpet, or save the garden from weeds, or make love, until the high treason of the end of their being, but it happens in such slow motion that they barely see its inexorable advance until they realize that their ”Cheers,” the place where everyone knows their name, is their physician’s office where they fecklessly try to forestall the inevitable, but the end will be the same, and they are no more.