"Mr. Hot Dignity-Dog"

Well, here's another question for our Maker. Wouldn't it be simpler if we started out at, say, 85 years old, and then gradually grew younger? What a great experience. We could watch wrinkles fade without spending millions on face creams, Botox, face lifts, and so on. No one would have to lie about her age, because you'd know that, soon enough, you'd be able to bend over and tie your shoes, get rid of that giant size box of Depends, and you'd have control over your flatulence. Then, you'd finish up in the warm safety of the womb, instead of visualizing the darkness and coldness of six feet of dirt on top of your body. If I could have plastic surgery to remove the memory of being a size four, I'd do it in a minute. Where was God's sense of humor here?

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"When I'm Gone"

The reader has been introduced to Maureen who has recently been diagnosed with cancer....

Throughout her treatment, we taunted each other with practical jokes and pranks. I brought her the most ridiculous hats I could find or create to cover her bald head, and she would give me outrageous things to save for when I got old, such as a cane with a brass lion's head as a handle. She said that she was confident that I would go into old age roaring fiercely, and intimidating everyone into doing everything my way. I brought her Depends on which I'd drawn flowers, because they didn't come deodorized. She laughed and said she felt like she was sliding down the butt crack of hell.

In a very intimate conversation with Maureen one day, she voiced her fears of vulnerability, and of the physical battles that were ahead of her. She expressed her regrets in life, her feelings of great loss for the things she never said, and never did, and the lack of time and energy to right the wrongs. This was during the fiasco of counting and recounting votes in Florida for the office of President of the United States.

Finally she said, "The tally came back. The score is cancer one to nothing. Sweetie, could you notify someone that we want a re-count, then a re-count done by hand…"