Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner

Warren Zevon is dying. He knows it. He was quoted as saying he wanted to live long enough to see the new Bond movie. He plans to spend his remaining time recording music and being with his friends and family.

George Harrison has a new album coming out, some recordings he started when he found out he was dying. I heard one of the songs from it today. It’s as good as a lot of the other music he’s done, and better than a lot of other stuff out there.

I could go off on a whole rant about how it’s not fair that talented people die while scumbags live, but I won’t. I think it’s pretty useless actually. The simple fact is, everybody dies. Some too soon, some not soon enough.
Some people suffer and some go peacefully.

Death sucks. I would imagine it’s no fun when it happens to you, and it sure isn’t fun to see when it happens to others. It makes people act strange when it happens to someone close to them. To make things worse, after all the time that mankind has been on this big wet ball, we still don’t have any set way to deal with it.

So, what have I established so far? Death sucks. Being around death sucks. No kidding Jon, is this worth a column?

Maybe.

Two weeks ago I was a my Grandmother’s funeral. It was nice, as funerals go. But something struck me during the service. I kind of tuned out the religious person who was speaking, and I started thinking about my Grandmother. A lot of things came at me at once. Sitting in her kitchen at before Christmas dinner and watching her get ready to put out dinner. The first Baseball game I ever went to was with her. She got me my first Beatles album. She was the first grownup to let me drink coffee. She explained about giving flowers to girls to me. There are a lot of other great memories, but I won’t bore you with them all.

What I’m leading up to is it really doesn’t matter how you die. Or when, or why or where. What’s important is what you do before it happens. My Grandmother didn’t get into the Guinness book of records. She didn’t invent
anything that would make life easier. But she made all her grandchildren happy. And as it turns out, she also served tin the USO during World War Two. She did a lot of other important things for the people around her.

I had a friend in high school who died at sixteen years old. To this day it was the hardest funeral I’ve had to go to. But Bob left his mark. There are still things I do, and things I enjoy that I might never had discovered if I hadn’t met Bob, including an appreciation for cars. Not everybody leaves a big mark, but everybody leaves something behind. And I think it important to think about the good things they leave. Maybe it comes with age, but I find it easier to except death knowing that the life before it wasn’t wasted.

So when the time comes, I’m going to be sad. But I’m going to listen to the music Warren Zevon wrote, and think about what he did while he lived. And while I’m blasting my stereo with Werewolves Of London, I’m going to smile...

It looks like Warren got to see the new Bond movie.

Jon