Sometimes I think about weird shit and then relay it to you, here, and when I get to the post button, sometimes I click it and sometimes I don't. I woke up this a.m with a Mac Lethal song stuck in my head called Jake + Olive. That's not the weird part.
I always wake up with random songs in my head. Often times I'm I didn't know I knew the words to this as I'm karaoke'ing the whole thing, doing my best Usher impression across the kitchen tile while emptying the dishwasher.
Give it a listen. The song's 11 years old. Track 12 on Irish Goodbye.
It's about his grandparents, the love they shared and how they impacted his life well into their 80's before leaving this world within weeks of each other. Chorus goes:
I know in life I won't be
Satisfied unless I live
My life with you, don't wanna
Live one single day apart
I hope I die before you do
It's not the lyrics that trip me out or the dying part per se. It's the if she dies before me part that I wouldn't mind erasing the possibility of.
I get all selfishly jealous when I hear that song. Jake + Olive had Mac Lethal, more than likely a handful of grandkids, children of their own and whoever else to take care of them into their 80's. Not I. If Pura dies before me, I'm fuuuuUuuUuU.u..
We both have a couple life insurance policies which, by the way, iThink should be called death insurance. Hold, please, I'm about to go off on a tangent.
Why in the hell they call a service that isn't required to fulfill itself until you're dead, life, is weird like those long ass tarantula eyelashes chicks glue to their face. They should call it death insurance. Or dead or dying or anything other than life. Life is deceiving. Anywho..
She's set to collect half of my pensions, the max allowable, and is beneficiary of my IRA when I'm no longer around to whip up sentences like this. That and a couple death insurance policies, the house is covered and, other than my chivalric omnipresence stripped from her life for eternity, she'll be fine.
Myself, however, should she check out first.
FuuUuUuu..
Cough!
I can't find the mustard without a map.
Send me for provolone, I'll just tell you right now, they don't have any.
Good thing she thinks I'm funny!
I didn't used to be so domesticated. I didn't even drink coffee before her and now I drink the stuff until noon with a most likely venomous concoction of coffee and coffee creamer and, if that's not anti-bachelor enough, I know what a duvet cover is and can be spotted on any given day comparing ingredients from one bag of dog food to the next in public.
Quiche, lasagne, twice baked potato, pizza from scratch, I used to do all that stuff. Now I'm lucky to put together a PB&J without fuckin something up. She'll call me sometimes if we're separated and she stops by the market, "do we need anything?"
Como?
I don't even know what we have.
I'm a helluva timer setter though! When she's got something in the oven or on the stove and needs a timer, she'll be like "set one for 40 minutes." Under most circumstances, I do exactly that, my intentions never go astray. I'll even scroll the timer to the precise minute she requested but about once every 20 times I forget to click start and we aren't alerted to my error until the oven's coughing like a Cheech and Chong flick.
Ever get about 648 words into your article and never said what you meant to say in the first place?
Make that 671.
Vegetable quiche—she made that. She'll never do dishes. No way. Not on my watch. She's a chef, makes me all kinds of delicious immune system boosting wholesomeness.
Or open doors. Not on my watch. Lift heavy, be cold, take the garbage out—no way, hell no, are you out of your skull?!
Protection, that's what I bring to the table along with attentiveness, admiration, compassion, desire, security, respect, all the normal stuff I appreciate equally but she has to know she's protected everywhere she goes and she does. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, I got her back.
Pump gas, never. Go down to the mailbox, only if she wants to. Stress, struggle, stumble? Not on my watch.
It's what I do—keep her safe and laughing. What makes her happy makes me happy and I still haven't said what I meant to say when I started this.
If she dies first.
Nearly a thousand words and however many images later and all I managed to do is avoid it. Even in a room full of virtual strangers, when I try to put the thought of her leaving before me in words, this is all I got.
