Looking At A Casket

IF I'VE TOLD YOU this before, stop me. It might not do any good, because I'm a mentally deteriorating old man, but, give it a shot. it might work. When I was about six years old, my grandfather died. This was 1961, I think. I remember, clear a a bell, standing in the mortuary looking at my grandfather (actually "step" grandfather) lying in his casket. My grandmother, having just lost her second of two beloved husbands, looked painfuly, agonizingly down at her soul mate, said "Oh Papa, come back to me". She called him "papa". I distinctly remember that. He was considerably older than she, grandma having been born in 1892, and he, in 1878, only a couple of years after Custer bit the dust, amazingly. I now consider it amazing to have personally known truly nineteenth cntury people. Well, even at my tender age, when she said that to her deceased husband, I fully knew that, as we say "it aint hapnin". The next day grandma was over at our house, sitting on t he patio with my mom,just hanging out, being with her only daughter in her time of great need.My mother did mmore. She said, to her mother, in a sort of impatient tone of voice "everybody has to die, mother". I think that was the moment when the full awareness of death impinged upon me, although, on the other hand, by the time I was six I had years and years of "Gunsmoke" and "Have Gun Will Travel" under my belt. But no doubt, I understand, knew what was going on. Looking back, I almost wish mom had dropped me off at a baby sitter then made her merry wayy to the mortuary childless, but, as they say, that's another matter. But actions have consequences. I have spent my entire life sleeping on my right side, my left side, and my stomach, but never, and I mean never, on my back. I don't sleep on my back, because I would probably wake up myself and the neighborhood with snorning, and...because...I cannot dislodge from my tortured mind the notion that I am lying here just like a corpse in a casket. Well, we all have our little psychoses and what not, and I just put one of mine on the internet, perhaps unwisely. Where all this is coming from is from my broken heart, the death of a good friend of mine, see previous essay. All my beloved who have died I'd have 'em all back again, and maybe that's why we invent heaven. I am among those who believe in something beyond death, as we say; I think maybe our atoms disperse and reconverge in endlessly new and diffferent forms, and that maybe we live trillions of lives, all versions of the same universe, and all that. But one thing I do believe is that there is something going on here, and to put it eloquently, or to put it in terms of criminology, the universe is up to something.