I knew how I would die. Every day I went to the corner newsstand, bought the Globe, a coffee, and leave fifty cents in the jar for the March of Dimes. In my apartment, a fifth-floor walk up, I opened the newspaper and cut out the obituaries. I once wrote a story about a man who saved obituaries. A journal said it was good but they never published the story.
I like the obituaries because they were hopeful. So and so died. Blah. Blah. Blah. They had a lovely life.
I will die in my apartment. I will rot for a few days and the neighbors will complain of the stink. The police will come and find me dead. Then men in hazmat suits will stuff my liquefying body in a bag. I will stay in a freezer until they confirm the time of death and then they will shove me off to a burial ground where people are unwanted and unloved.
That is how I will die. I read obituaries because they are deaths where people cry and mourn. No one will do that for me. No one. I am alone in death.
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