Death And Taxes
Shane Smithers
Katoomba,
NSW
He
told me I was going to die, but everybody dies. What he didn’t tell me was that
he was going to kill me. I wish I knew what he meant, you know, before it
happened. I would have avoided him. I would have gone away. I certainly wouldn’t
have leant him my gun. Not that it matters, everyone dies sooner or later. Some
people would rather it happened sooner rather than later, especially when
they’re thinking of someone else, someone annoying, but most people try not to
think about death. And because we don’t like to dwell on death we don’t seem to
know much about it. Maybe that was my problem. I didn’t want to think about my
own death. I didn’t want to consider the possibility of dying. I certainly
didn’t want to think he meant straight away, right after he told me that I was
going to die. I didn’t want to believe that he wanted me dead; or that his
words were more of a threat than a comment on the nature of mortality. So I
ignored it, he shot me and I died.
It’s
funny, you know, I remember the moment I first realised that I was going to
die. I was about four, maybe five. It was before my grandfather died. He had cancer;
maybe the family was talking about it. Maybe they were talking about someone
else. I can’t remember exactly, not that I would have known what they were
talking about. Adults always talked about stuff I didn’t understand. Anyway, my
father said something about death and taxes and it dawned on me.
So
I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m not going to die.’
And
my father replied, ‘Yes you are, everybody dies. We get born and then we live
for a while and then one day we die. Everybody dies.’
I
got a little upset. ‘Are you going to die? Is Mummy going to die?’ I asked him.
‘One
day, a long time from now,’ he said. I started to cry. He picked me up and sat
me on his knee. ‘It’s all right, you’ll be all grown up by then,’ he said.
Dad
got in trouble off my mother, he just couldn’t lie to make me feel better and
as my realisation grew, I realised that my brothers and sister were going to
die, my dog, Bambi, and everyone else, Nanna and Par, everyone, even me. Everyone
was going to die. I couldn’t stop crying.
Then
one day, my grandmother came to our house. She was upset and then my father
went away with her. After lunch I asked my mother where Daddy was. She said he
went to sit with Granddad. I thought that was strange. He never went to sit
with Granddad before.
‘When
is he coming home?’ I asked.
‘Daddy’s
upset, because Granddad died today,’ she said softly.
‘Did
Granddad die like the pups?’ I asked.
‘Kind
of, he was very sick and he died.’
‘Has
Daddy gone to look at Granddad?’ I asked.
‘Daddy
has gone to say goodbye.’
‘Oh.’
I thought a moment. ‘Can you say goodbye to dead people?’ I asked. What I really
wanted to know was whether dead people could say goodbye back.
I
remember that our Corgi, Bambi, had pups and some of them died. We went out to
play with them, but some of them were cold and still. My brother ran to the
house, and my mother came back running with him. She took the dead puppy off
me. He was my favourite. He had a white patch on the back of his neck. I was
upset when she told me that the puppy had died. His tongue was sticking out, I
remember that. My pup was the first person I ever loved that died, at least the
first one I can remember dying.
My
mother used fly spray in the house. She had a green pump spray thing with a
cylinder at the front that you filled from a bottle of poison and then pumped the
handle, like a bike pump, and a fine mist of fly spray came out the front. I
remember my sister, she was maybe a year old, picking up dead flies and eating
them. I went to stop her, it didn’t look right, eating dead flies off the
floor, but she was insistent. Then she offered me one. I thought about it. She
seemed to like them. Mother was not happy when she found her sitting on the
linoleum, about to put another dead fly in her mouth.
I
said, ‘She likes eating them.’
Mother
was mortified. I didn’t say anything but my older brother used to get them for
her. He liked watching her eat dead flies. Mother told me that he used to feed
me garden worms before I realised that dirt didn’t taste that good. Apparently
he used to dig for them with a spoon and then scoop them up and feed them to
me, dirt and all. I was a baby so I have no memory of the worms. There’s no
point asking me what they tasted like.
Anyway,
I never thought of the dead flies as dead animals, or that my mother would have
committed genocide on their entire race if she could have. They were just black
buzzing things and then they fell to the floor, skated around in circles buzzing
furiously, and then they stopped. I suspect babies don’t have a good
understanding of what is food and what is a dead insect. But who knows, it may
be cultural. Some people eat insects. The Israelites ate locusts, apparently ‘God’
told them to. Locusts are insects. I remember seeing the Prime Minister on the
telly and a fly crawled into his mouth. We were laughing so much that we didn’t
see if it came back out, but he never waved it away. I never understood why
people on the telly let flies crawl all over their faces.
Over
the years I saw some death, people who died in accidents, people who died from
too much drink, cancer, heart attacks and that sort of thing. People look very
different after they die. When I was 16 my other grandfather died. I had only
seen him an hour before. I could hardly recognise him: his eyes looked
different and his teeth looked too big for his mouth. It was awful. He was the
first human person I ever saw after he had died.
I
never knew anyone who was murdered, other than me of course, but you can’t
really know yourself, because you are yourself. You can only know other people,
which is ironic really, because you never really know other people, only
yourself. Anyway, all the people I knew who died, died of natural causes,
smoking, or in road accidents or when things went wrong at work. None of them
got shot. Then I got shot and died. So everyone I knew can say, they knew
someone who was murdered. I don’t think I’d like that, knowing someone who was
murdered. What they didn’t realise was that most of them also knew someone who had
committed murder. They still don’t know and no matter how hard I try I can’t
tell them.
You
know how people say stuff about giving them a sign to prove the afterlife? Well,
all of that’s a bit of a waste of time. I gave a friend several signs, but he
was an atheist so he didn’t think anything of it. Another woman, a spiritualist,
was always going about saying that I was speaking to her, or that she could see
me, but she was always looking in the wrong direction. When I did speak to her
she couldn’t hear me.
The
funny thing is, I know that I’m dead, I know that there is nothing I can do
about being dead, but I still want to do something about it. I want justice. I
wish I could come back, finish a few things off. Clean out the shed, shag the
lady across the road, organise my finances, cut some people out of my will. I
wish I could have had a funeral where only people I liked turned up. I wish I
didn’t have to hear their fake condolences. But what can you do? There’s not
much point in being dead. It’s kind of like before you were born, kind of like
nonexistence, you can’t do anything.
Descartes
said, ‘I think therefore I am’ or ‘Cogito ergo sum’, if you prefer the Latin. I
used to think he was right, but now I’m not so sure. I can think, but I’m not,
or should it be I’m dead, ‘So I think but I aren’t’. No, that doesn’t sound
like proper grammar, but I can’t think of the opposite to ‘I am’. Maybe there
is life after death. Anyway, ‘therefore I am’, just doesn’t sound very
definite, if you know what I mean. Maybe another word would have helped. ‘I
think therefore I exist’, almost works, except for the fact that thought is not
a requirement of existence.
In
The Philosopher’s Song, the Monty
Python boys interpreted Descartes’ dictum as, ‘I drink therefore I am’, which
makes just as much sense. A French bloke by the name of Destutt de Tracy said, ‘I
sense, therefore I exist as a sentient being’, which makes much more sense. At
least it has parameters. I always thought the problem was that Descartes didn’t
really understand the nature of existence, or life for that matter. You know …
you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, then you’re not alive. You’re dead. If
you’re a tree, you’re a living tree, you’re alive, then you’re a dead tree. A
tree doesn’t think, but it’s alive, it exists.
If
Descartes was a tree, he wouldn’t have said anything, because trees don’t talk
or think, but if he was a tree and we applied his dictum it might have been ‘I
transpirate, therefore I am a tree’. It’s not very catchy, but it would have
been true. The trouble is that this stuff doesn’t really help us understand
life or death or existence for that matter. But it’s a shame Descartes is dead,
because you can’t argue with dead people. They don’t say goodbye back and they
don’t defend their philosophy either. But, it’s more of a shame that I’m dead,
because no-one will remember me. At least Descartes has his crappy dictum, even
if the ordinary person doesn’t really know what it means, or why it’s wrong.
Being
dead is not fun. Immediately after I was shot, I stumbled and fell, I clutched
my chest, blood gushed out. I managed to say, ‘You bastard’, then everything
faded away. I could feel the pain for a while. I heard distant voices calling
me; my eyes flickered open, there were people gathering around, shock was
setting in, all the sounds were high pitched and everyone was bathed in bright
light. I felt cold. But I was still alive. I realised I was in shock.
Then
my heart stopped, the light faded and I died. Nothingness. My brain would soon
die and I would be dead for all eternity. There was no tunnel of light, no
angels to accompany me to heaven or snarling shadows to drag me down a storm
water grate like in Ghost. There was nothingness,
peaceful nothingness. Then there were flashes of memory, the shooting, my
contemplations of death, the pups and the dead flies and all sorts of
theological crap that I easily dismissed. And there was an incessant beeping I
couldn’t get to the bottom of.
I
opened my eyes two days ago. I had a tube stuck down my throat so I couldn’t
talk. Apparently paramedics were close by when I was shot. They arrived just in
time, managed to stem the flow of blood, fill me up with fluid and got my heart
started. The mind plays funny tricks on you. Not when you’re dead, that was the
nothingness part, but when you’re in a coma your mind works overtime. All that
stuff about talking to people and giving signs was my overactive imagination
trying to deal with the shooting. For the record my childhood memories are an
accurate telling of my first encounters with death.
So
what now? Identify the killer – tick. Get better and shag the lady from across
the road. If I’m lucky she’ll succumb to my sophisticated seduction. (Just
kidding, I’ll be lucky if she will have me.) Then maybe I should clean out the
shed and fix my finances. I think I should start on the bucket list as soon as
possible, nothing too strenuous to start with. Getting shot, dying, and being
brought back changed my perspective on life.
No
matter how long life is, it’s too short. Don’t sacrifice living today for some
imaginary prize in the afterlife, live today, live a full life, love, don’t
hate, that’s what I am going to do. Too many times I hear people say they
regret the things they did not do, not the mistakes they made. So live a life
and don’t be too afraid of taking chances or making mistakes. Remember, life is
fleeting, death is permanent. So make the most of life. I will.
Bio:
Every now and then things happen that make us evaluate our lives. Recently Shane
has been thinking about death. Not in a bad way, but rather remembering funny
and sad things about death, and so this story encapsulates some of those
things. In his 'spare time', Shane is a senior lecturer at UWS and is also the
curator for the newly-established narratorPRIDE.com
