Rhymes with Joker

On Poker and Death

After posting my last update, I promptly had one of my worst days in the last couple of weeks, barely breaking even in cash play, and then playing a number of tournaments and not getting past the first break in any of them. But after all of that, I had another final-table cash, a sixth-place finish for $700. Then I slept, for only a couple of hours, and Gil and I went down to Michigan City for some live play, which went horribly. So the last 48 hours consist of a lot of horrid play with a single bright spot that happens to be bright enough to outshine the rest.

(Before I actually posted this, I realized that everything after the first paragraph reads as rather morbid. I don't mean it to be, and I don't perceive it to be, and I'm the one it's about. If the rest of this motivates you to apoplexies of emotion: relax.)

But that's not really the point of this post. After returning home, I went to bed, and although I apparently wasn't as tired as I should have been, a point was brought home to me.

I'm in really bad shape. Physically, I mean. Because of the way I was lying in bed, I noticed that my heartrate was something in the vicinity of 120 beats a minute, measured by the (nearly infallible!) one-Mississippi two-Mississippi method. Now, I had had a big meal not long before, so my metabolism was probably elevated because of the "exercise" of digesting it, but even if my metabolism is/was thus boosted by a third, my limited understanding of cardiac health says I'm still in the range of "walking heart attack." I thus began to consider (I'm lying in bed in the middle of the night, remember) the prospect of my imminent death.

All of this said, the prospect of actually doing anything about my poor cardiac health isn't one that appeals to me. A change in diet and an increase in exercise would improve my heart health, no doubt. But I wouldn't like doing either of those. And to paraphrase a line out of one of the Hitchhiker's books (I think Life, the Universe, and Everything), I don't enjoy life enough to put a lot of effort into prolonging it. (I found the actual line, from Chapter 20 of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.") But in any case, the alternative seems to be an early death from heart disease: Not "before I'm 50," or even "before I'm 40," but maybe "within the next year." I spent a little bit of time tonight (again, lying in bed in the middle of the night) wondering if tonight might be my last.

That being so, and having spent some of the last couple of weeks peripherally involved with a funeral and its associated events, I started thinking about how a funeral should go, if I'm the guest of honor. (It's probably good to write this down anyway, since, if I'm dead, I really can't tell people about it if it actually becomes important.)

All of the family funerals I've been to have been Catholic funerals, for the sound reason that the deceased has always been Catholic. But I don't really consider myself Catholic; I don't really consider myself anything. I would use the term "relaxed agnostic," although I've been referred to as an "Enlightenment fundamentalist" as well, and I accept that. (Don't focus on the "fundamentalist" bit until after you've focused on the "Enlightenment" bit or you'll be misled drastically; "Enlightenment" here refers to the historical era and its dominant philosophy.) I have no objections to a funeral in a Catholic church as long as nobody lies about me to make me fit into the church; I'm impressed by the history and tradition of the Catholic Church but consider most of its actual tenets to be bunk. All of that said, if going whole hog and pretending I am/was a good Catholic really makes people happy, well, I'm dead, so who am I to object?

(What "hymns" do you use for a non-Catholic Catholic funeral? Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler?" Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" (good title, wholly inappropriate lyrics)? Elvis Presley's "The Wonder of You?" Or do you just go all-out wrong, like Elton John's "Crocodile Rock?")

You know, whenever I've imagined my funeral in the past there've always been girls wailing over my coffin. I don't know if they're supposed to be my wives or girlfriends or mistresses or what, but it just doesn't seem right to have someone dying fairly young without girls wailing over the coffin about what now will never be. I may not be a 1950s highschool "bad boy" who dies tragically in a motorcycle accident, but for some reason it still seems like I'm supposed to get the girl in the end. Of course, I don't have any wives, girlfriends, or mistresses, and haven't had any for longer than I care to admit. But I've flirted with a lot of poker dealers over the years, and the least they could do is come wail over my coffin. (Umm, that last line is a joke. I think. Maybe it's possible to hire "extra" mourners for, like, the weekend. That's a joke, too. Hey, I'm dead, remember?)

I have the feeling that a lot of people would have a lot of trouble coming up with a eulogy for me. I think it should be the truth, and all of the truth. See Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead for an idea of what I'm talking about. It's okay to talk about how I'm smart, and funny (or I try), and boisterous, and how I like kids, especially very young kids. But it should also talk about my struggles to find a place in the world, my complete cluelessness about women, and my compulsive need to be independent of or outside the scope of or simply in rebellion against the rules, or laws, of any type, even my own. The way I look at my political work in the 1990s is that I spent my time trying to fix the world, and the world told me to go to hell. The way I look at the last few years is that I've been trying to make poker work for me, and haven't been very successful, but then I haven't been very successful at anything else, either, and at least this I enjoy. The one-sentence eulogy: I was a 36-year-old misfit. For the long version, you can use this, and you can use a lot of the rest of what I've written about myself in this blog. It's not comprehensive, it doesn't cover every fact of my life, but it does cover pretty much the way I've viewed the world over the last three years.

As far as disposing of any assets I might have, and there aren't many, I leave them to my parents to dispose of as they will.

(I know I had another paragraph I wanted to write about "How the world will be different when I'm dead," but now I can't think of it. Ahh well, if it comes to me later, I can always add it.)

(If you're really disturbed by this, go back and read the second (parenthetical) paragraph again: Don't be disturbed. I'm not.)

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