Uhhhh. . . - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/114/last-words

My last words are going to suck.

As I've already talked about, I'm going to die with Alhziemers. I'm loosing my brain, I'm not remembering anything, and my life is going to go out in a sad forgetful whimper, and with that being said, my last words are going to suck.

The irony behind all of this is that I like to think that I master my own words. My entire job is about words and how to put them together. Somehow I'm supposed to be the master of words. I'm supposed to know something about just the right words to say in just the right moments, but the thing that people don't seem to understand with all of that knowledge is that I don't do it on the fly. My creation of the words that I create is not on the fly. In the moment, I'm stupid. Without revisions, drafts, edits, and lots of time, my words fall flat. That means that even on my best days, even on those days that I am proud to know what is happening within sentences and paragraphs, I could never create something in the moment assuming that I knew that I was going to die in the next few minutes.

That's the worst part about it, I know when and how I'm going to die. I'm going to be dead somewhere in my 70's or maybe my 80's, I'm going to most likely be in my bed, and I've known that for a while. Even with that information, I still don't know what I'm going to say. I've got nothing.

I can put words into the mouths of characters. I can create worlds. I can put an entire discussion into the mouth of people that doesn't exist, but dying me seems to be significantly lacking in any words to say.

What in the world would I say to those people around me as they watch me loose my mind? There's nothing that I can think of that I want to say to those people.

There's nothing that I could consider in one sentence that would wrap up my entire world. I'm such a messed up world of everything that to find one final sentence to put it all together is impossible. How do I wrap up the facts of my life that seem to disagree with each other, or at least don't sit at the same lunch table. Then the kicker to all of this is that in the few decades that I do have between now and death, I'm sure that I'm only going to get even crazier. Those people that are around my death bed (yes the actual bed) aren't going to get any summary that I put out for my life, because unless they spend a lot of time with coherent me, they're not going to get it.

I'm guessing that my final words are going to be something mundane, something stupid, and something that goes exactly opposite of all of my playing around with words my entire life. I'm putting my money on "That pudding was awful," with a second runner up being, "Who are you?"