Perfect Timing

The minor heart-attacks are increasing.
That's what they must be, there's no doubt about it.  Accelerated
heartbeats, loss of breath, pain in the chest, slight numbness in the
left arm.

I'm a dead woman.

Well, as good as dead.  I know it's coming like bulls with their tails
on fire, and I'm pretty cool about it.  I'm making sure to keep nice
and calm.  I want the main event to be something special.

A work of live, terminal art to shock the very shit out of the players
in the theater of my life.

I want to be driving a car and become involved in a hurricane of road
rage so severe that my heart ceases and a 40-car pileup ensues.

Without feeling that I'm compromising too much, I will settle for a 3
or 4 car smash-up, with a fair amount of rubber-necking to catch a
glimpse of my tragic remains.

Not that my passing will be a tragedy.  I really haven't done anything
special in my life, except get the jump on my death.

Now that is something to be proud of and I intend to fabricate an
appropriate ending.

Some of my other choices are dying in a really expensive restaurant,
during an important business meeting.  I throw a tantrum so lavish, so
extravagant in its exaggeration and profundity, a hissy-fit last seen
thrown by a pharaoh or dictator would not compare.  Of course it will
be over something minor; the wrong fork, or a soup too hot or too
cold, or a water glass half full.  Something to make other patrons
stare, the other meeting participants cringe and my parents spin in
their graves.

I mean, something truly special.  I have begun working on the list of
unnecessarily complicated words I will use in this tirade;
"gastroenteritis" will certainly be one of them. At the very least I
will throw in "achondroplasia" just to muddy the waters.

The scenario I'm particularly enamored with is a shouting match with
my husband.  A good row over who was supposed to wash dishes or pick
up dinner; something really menial and every-day, but an argument
comprised of a thousand accumulated slights, giving it enough mass and
momentum to roll into an avalanche of a good old fashion, 42 round,
heavy weight fight, where someone is bound to end up dead.  It would
be a bloody, no-holds-barred grudge match, that finally explodes into
one preplanned myocardial infarction.

Yes, one hell of a fix would be in on that bout.

My options aren't limitless and neither is my time, but I'm shooting
for a little urban legend making street theater and the only
difference between tragedy and comedy is timing.

Perfect timing.


Grendel 

"Do you have the time? Tragically, my heart would seem to be stuck to
my sleeve, obscuring my watch."