In Which Meatloaf Conquers My Fear of Death*

I've always been totally freaked out about dying. Not really the best fear to have when your job is dead people. I'm constantly spending time with the family members of people who are dead/dying in the hospital, and it's awful. I enjoy it, because it's my job to give meaning to death. Yes, your loved one died, and it totally blows. Now, let's use this senseless tragedy to save someone else's life, and tell the Grim Reaper to go screw himself. I have to have these internal monologues to do what I do, and it works. I love my job.

But, when the eye turns inward, things are a little tougher. When I watch a fiance falling apart at the bedside of her future husband's deathbed, I can't help but be a little selfish. I think that if it were my fiance in that bed, I would die. I would just die. And I'm sure that's what she's feeling. When I see parents at the bedside of their child, I think that when I have kids, they will live in a padded room, wear a helmet, and drink their meals through a straw. I know how incredibly easy it is for something simple to kill someone. And it freaks the living hell out of me.

And I've always wondered...when you're like 70 years old, do you just constantly think about death? I know a lot of really happy-seeming old people. They enjoy themselves, don't seem to have a care in the world, and I think if I were them I would be on constant death-alert. You see it on television and people say "I'm ready" or "let me go" and I've always thought, "YOU'RE CRAZY!! BREATHE!!!" I really don't understand people that are okay with death.

So last week I was watching "House." And yes, the show is ridiculous and it's never lupus and all that jazz, but I love Hugh Laurie and find the show diverting. So I'm watching, and the story is that Meatloaf is going to die of lung cancer. In the opening scene. He's on his deathbed, he's telling his wife goodbye, I'm thinking what a waste it is of a perfectly good Meatloaf cameo, and he looks like he's slipping away. And I mean, it really looks like he's going. You know when you're sooooo tired that you're falling asleep in spite of yourself? And you know how good it feels when you finally give into it? Like when you're sick and you knock yourself out with Nyquil?

That is the exact look that Meatloaf had. I felt that peaceful sleepy feeling just looking at him. And then I realized. That's how you feel when you die. (You know, unless you have some horrible traumatic accident and in those cases you're gone so fast you never feel anything anyway.) It's like the longest nap ever. And I thought, I love naps. This is how older people deal with death. They're so tired from doing their jobs, cooking, cleaning, and dealing with a-holes at Dunkin' Donuts, that death looks like a vacation. And now when I think of that wonderful slipping off to sleep feeling, I think that death will eventually be okay.

And that is how in one brilliant guest appearance, Meatloaf conquered my fear of death.

*This post is dedicated to Donny. The only person I know who appreciates the true genius that is Meatloaf.