There’s a sign near my door which reads:

60 years maximum parking.

It might seem arbitrary but it is given in time units because the bureau sweeper knows my biology. The blood smears have a purpose and we have to make room for the young.

The Activity Counselor/Wills & Trust Lawyer comes into my room with a tray of eggs and one flower in a vase. The flower is a dandelion. Judy Bench says I should blow on the dandelion after making a wish and proceed with the eggs (wich are always poached in boiled water).

The eggs resemble brain matter unleashed from a watery skull. Glioblastoma. How they shake and quake when the smallest hands hand the plate. I keep my youngest grand-daughter on Wednesdays because she has not become jaded by public school. Under the new set of laws I can just have her near my bed and tell her stories. If she remembers part of grandpa’s story that is Comprehension. If she remembers all my wives that is Mathmatica. Mostly it is just Social Studies. Her name is El.

Judy Bench won’t let me start the lesson because I have to review the documents of my life. As an Activity Director – most of Judy’s day is spent trying to get people to sign documents. This is why old people get the shakes. We know that if we sign with a solid hand that the courts will think we wanted the lies.

Judy says I should donate the remaining assets to the Heritage Committee.

“What’s that?”

El is blinking with her long eye lashes. Usually she stays very still when Judy and the other staff are around. They have some rule about short people visiting after 5. They don’t want to be responsible for short people because there have been many lawsuits over the height of the drinking fountain and the urinals. Everyone wants us to stretch very tall because it is supposed to be good for the back.

Judy Bench takes out her Trident White gum. It’s not working. The woman has a crooked smile which cannot be fixed by burgundy lipstick. She can try to draw on her crooked mouth straight and it just adds to the impossibility of the look. Imagine! A lawyer with a crooked smile. El thinks it looks fantastic but she is young.

“The Heritage Committee seeks to make your death have meaning. “ Judy puts her hands together like an ark. The ark rest just below her naval. She has on a starched skirt and I find it indecent to look at her hands or skirt while El is watching. Old men don’t think of those things during death talks.

“What do you mean by that?”

My whole life I wanted the excuse to be a curmudgeon, like Bukowski in the diner after getting rich. Like the world’s most unhumble actor receiving the Academy Award for Knowledge. I can throw the microphone at their foreheads and they will take the knot it makes and call themselves blessed.

Unfortunately, I am not a curmudgeon. I have to say humble things when El is watching. She is learning about the world and I don’t want her to think she comes from petty and angry people who die at 60. It might be true but I don’t want her to presuppose such things.

“Well, we want to help you to give back.”

Nonsense! You want to scrape my skin and sell my organs. Hitler never made a profit but you do!

Instead I said, “That is very kind of you. How will you _help_ me, Ms. Bench?”

“For example, we can take some place you been and loved and turn it into a protected park. Would you like that? Can you tell me where you have most felt special in this life?”

Motel Sex on frequent liar days. They even have a continental breakfast of orange juice and oatmeal.

I didn’t want them to spend all my money to set the motel in amber and run people through like it was a great museum. Instead I asked: “Won’t that take away from my families endowment? I can’t sit here and pay for good times if I know they are not cared for.”

Judy Bench’s face twerked because I ended a sentence with a preposition. She is also the author of seventeen grammar books besides being a Juris Doctorate and an Activities Director.

“No. No. Mr. Goround. The nation has decided to put aside small plots of land which have helped make people strong. You know most people are dying at 55 these days thanks to the Covid shot. You’re _special_.”

I didn’t want to tell her why I overcame the Covid Shot. It wasn’t really her business. So I stooped down, below the rail of my hospital bed and whispered the answer into the ear of El. The child nodded that she understood. I know it wasn’t polite, to stoop down and ignore the government woman but El was my people. She even resembled the better portions of my mother.

Judy Bench waited for a few more moments and then understood that I wasn’t going to say anything. She left with the posture of someone who was going to get chewed out my her betters.

*

Now the real reason I had not expired at 55 (the mathematical age to bring the United States into a perfect balance of young people: Social Security) … the reason I had not had any one of the hundreds of complications to being vaxxed (Like frontal tick disorder, assburgers’s , smugness and all the rest)... I had always made love after getting the seven booster shots.

Something about the way the phlebotomist always missed my vein gave me such agility. My old wife never had it so good! Then she died.

I tried to tell her and everyone else 1.) get the shot 2.) drink loads of water 3.) get naked 4.) let it all spill out. NO DICE.

When Pizza Girl expired (That’s just a nickname. She actually was an erotic dancer in college). When Pizza Girl expired and all her combination organs seemed to shrivel and her heart flatlined and her brain just sort of mimicked a dementia patient waiting for bubble gum in the lobby… that’s when I knew that I was going to have to become very charming.

There is no sacred water of youth. Even though I worked for years in the industry (bottled water) and we tied up all the mountains from The Rockies to the Great Sierras … like I told every silly farmer in Montana, “No bruther. Minerals change the taste but there is no real magic water. You know Dasani is literally the recycled toilet water from Atlanta?”

This simply proved marketing and availability. The government wanted to know if it was Fort Jones aquifer, the Saint Jerome property near Dunsmuir… they wanted to know if Glacier Bay was really a glacier. Surprisingly hydrologist can only test for what they know about. I was saying nothing.

El looked at me so lovingly. I took her off her mother’s breast as fast as possible and mixed in Nestle Baby Formula with my favorite water. This has nothing to do with Nancy Shepard Hugh’s “Death Without Weeping”. We all love Nescafe.

El winked back at me. She was what normies call “emotionally intelligent.” and could actually feel my thoughts even though I still liked to whisper into her ear. It’s just more classical an approach.

“Do you want me to bottle the water if you die, Grandpa?”

“El…”

I don’t think she heard me the first ten times.

I made sure El was never vaxxed by sending her to home school, citing religious intolerances and then redesignating her as an immigrant. She was pure as the day that she was delivered. By an angel, of course.

Crap. I’m gonna die. Here’s the deal:

Tears.

It’s nothing that Dannon International Brands wants to private label as Evian au le Hombre. I simply make myself cry.

You would think that this toxifies the Nestle Baby Formula, the instant oatmeal, the vitamins and pills I take? It does not. You would think that the tear ducts (which contain no t-cells) would just let everything in and out. I must surely be taking out my body toxins through the eyes? I am not.

Long ago, I looked like a pothead, always with the red eyes. Never able to get my lids to sit right on the face. Also, I could not watch a really sad movie with the natural urge to cry. Except maybe Return of the Jedi. That one doesn’t count. Basically, I had not the ability to clean my eyes.

This was before Covid.

So I went to the optometrist, who was perpetually on vacation, and when they finally came back, and felt guilty, they gave me the experimental drops left by the pharmaceutical reps in Monterey. I guess no one spent seven years to see the side affects. Since Covid, it’s like we don’t even have an FDA.

There were side effects.

For example: every time i saw something beautiful I wanted to cry.

This is why I keep El near me at all times.

When Pizza Girl died I had no feeling. I paid for the coffin and decided upon a preacher and who to invite and the day was sunny. But I felt a warmness come over me that wouldn’t shed a tear. It was all natural; the life cycle.

When I held the rose too long and all the people left and I was thinking about our children together and the nose got itchy… I was still fine. It was only when the undertakers lowered the casket and I still held that rose that I decided I was going to dive into the pit and lie with her for a while.

This made me cry.

I cannot say why. We should all drink and laugh like the Irish when someone graduates from Earth but it made me cry.

El holds my hand in the hospital. Even now, with three or four weeks left to live I wish they could just hook up my body and sucker me down.

It is given for each man

to die but once. If only I could die a thousand times and keep crying..

That would be a good life.