I guess I should have known the “you are going to die junk mail” would happen. It happens to all of us sooner or later. Well, if you live long enough.
I was sitting at the table eating a steak and spinach salad. Both the steak and the spinach were on the “iffy” side, chronologically speaking.
I picked up the current stack of mail that would soon be moved across the table to the old stack of mail, the bulk of which is periodically dumped into the overflow box. The overflow box gets cleaned out about once a quarter. Usually, because we’re frantically looking for something important like a $10 off coupon from Quaker Steak and Lube or a jury summons.
We suck at being adults.
Anyway, I flipped through the mail and there it was. My first “you are going to die” junk mail.
Me: Fucking hell. I got my first death junk mail. From Rest Haven Memorial Park.
Randy: It’s not the first one.
Me:…
Randy: I throw them away.
Me: It’s depressing.
Randy: I got that junk mail back when I was in my thirties.
Me:…
Me: It’s the end of the line junk mail. I mean, not just that it’s about dying, it’s actually the end of the line for junk mail. There is nowhere else junk mail can go with me. I have reached the end. They can’t sell me anything after I’m dead. I have hit the junk mail wall.
Randy: Well, you actually hit it a while ago, because like I said, I’ve been throwing them away.
Me: Asshole.
Me: It just sucks getting this reminder. I mean, we are late bloomers.
Me: Like, super late bloomers. We’re just starting to bloom and we’re already getting our death notices. 
Randy: You’re being slightly dramatic.
Me: Whatever, old man.
I watched, slightly horrified, as Randy tore the envelope open to read it. It was like he was about to read from the Handbook For The Recently Deceased from Beetlejuice.
I attempted an air of nonchalance that I wasn’t feeling. I thought “I don’t know about reading that, dude. Or really, even touching it.”
I couldn’t take it and went upstairs to escape into Netflix but I wanted to write this down, so I asked Randy to bring the junk mail upstairs so I wouldn’t forget. He handed it to me before going into his office and I shoved it behind my laptop.
I had to have a somewhat stern “it’s just fucking junk mail” discussion with myself.
I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t read the fine print. I do know that I can get a pre-planning kit request certificate. It’s written in very large letters. You know, so old people can see it. So I have that going for me.
I’m not saying preparing for the dirt nap is a bad idea. I mean, I assume that is what responsible adults do. I’m just saying, that junk mail made me feel older than my actual age or the widening gray streaks in my hair.
I don’t mind, though. I might be getting older, but this shit is fun y’all. I know that I’m broken and my anxiety has been killing me, but I still dig being me. I will continue doing the best I can every day and keep looking forward to the next thing that happens.
So, I got a reminder that we aren’t babies anymore, but that’s okay. It’s also a reminder that I love this part. The middle part.
My friend, Mountain Girl, explained that the middle part gets to last as long as we want. I’m going to hang here for a while.
For this week’s Dude, we’re out of order. Some of you read Dude daily on Facebook which means you’ll have seen these recently. For those of you who don’t, Randy’s been driving me crazy with the banana pen pineapple pen thing. He enlisted Dude for the same thing.
You do your mail the same way I do mine!!
However.
I skip the ‘new’ pile to ‘old’ pile step.
And the ‘clean out every quarter’ step.
But the rooting around for the coupon or reimbursement from insurance check is EXACTLY the same!
Dude pretty much saved my life this week.
I have kaleidoscope Dude on his horse and Dude riding off into the Wild Blue Yonder on my slideshows.
They make me very happy and I smile bigger than Dude 🙂
The ‘Tarter Sauce – Fish – Pen’ one about sent me into unrecoverable fits of laughter….
Which made me feel very old because laughing makes me pee a little.
That was really nice of Randy to pre-sort the mail for you.
Thank God he quit in time for this post!
Hope your ‘special cough syrup’ is working better than hoped for 🙂
It’s good to not be alone in the mail thing. hahaha. And the cough syrup is nice. I am so bummed to be sick, though.
Never fails: So sick during the week you can barely survive.
OR
Whole weekend ruined cuz you can be as sick as you really are 🙁
Enjoy that lemon honey tea. Washes the ‘special cough syrup’ taste down 🙂
Fuck. I keep spelling couph wrong.
I’m sick toooooooo!!!!!!!
Junk mail can be scary.
I know people who found out they were being sued because defense attorneys started sending them ads (attorneys look through recent filings, sometimes managing to find the defendant for ads before the constable does for service).
I knew one person who discovered they were HIV+ because they received an ad for medication before they got their test results (not sure how that happened with HIPAA and all, but…).
So you got cemetary ads before you actually died. That’s not quite reading-your-own-obituary-in-the-paper.
It’s still funny and frightening.
There is no privacy at all, is there. I mean none.
We are all dying. We just don’t know when we are going to die. Certainly not something I want to know either! The when.
If there is a heaven or hell I guess I’ll find out when I realize I don’t like being fucking hot.
I don’t get that kind of junk mail. Ever. Then again I look at my mail and think it’s a bill. Put it over there to pay before you forget.
I get, “would you like to buy an unaffordable condo type of junk mail”. (There is no such thing.)
Trash. Woops recycling. So politically incorrect. 😉
Hahahah. I have recycle guilt.
I must be getting so old that they gave up on me! Even AARP has quit sending me their “junk mail” but then I have been kinda insulting on my blog about their insurance plans.
Lesson to be learned: If they still think you are alive, that is a good thing. Waking up on the right side of the grass always is!
Be well.
Barbara
You are so right. Being here is pretty fucking awesome.
I don’t get much junk mail, as my mailing address isn’t my home address, but being a Democrat, I got two big piles of election ads that I still have to gather up and get rid of. I should do that soon, actually, because every time I see them they make me think about…
No. I don’t need any encouragement to think about those things, so those piles go in the recycle bin today.
Tell Dude that when I worked at the Sizzler in Eureka, I made the best tartar sauce ever…
Yes, dump that shit! I’ve been sick and Dude has been my constant companion.
Briana just reminded me that we actually did get junk mail from funeral services, way back in the mid-eighties when we were in our twenties. The mail they sent had postage-paid return cards, so we took a felt tip marker and wrote “VULTURES” on them and mailed them back. I don’t remember how long it took, but they did stop sending us stuff…
Hahahahaah
What scared me more is when I started reading it! I even wanted to prepay my creamation but my financial advisor told me this not a good use for my money yet.
My financial adviser told me to buy scratch off tickets
Anything but pre- pay for your own cremation. FFS.
Is that what responsible adults really spend their hard-earned cash on?
I have no idea what responsible adults spend their money on.
Haralee- I love your take on peanut butter- hilarious!
Ditto any nut these days, right? Who the hell knows how long we’ve got with nuts lurking in all sorts of food items?
On that basis, maybe we should all have a kick-the-ole-bucket “plan” in place from the word go. To be amended as life bumbles along.
Am joking, but only just.
fucking nuts…I long for a grapefruit. (sorry..was channeling Eddie Izzard)
You need to live with my husband for awhile….he would take care of your mail situation….quite often he throws ours out before I ever even get a chance to see it. He throws out coupons that I want to save. He even threw out our family photo with Santa once by accident because the envelope that contained it sat on the counter one day longer than he could stand. He didn’t even bother to look inside!
Hahaha…that honestly sounds like Randy except not with mail, with other things. He just randomly pitches things…
They haven’t found me yet, though I’m sure it won’t be long. Facebook on the other hand has started to show me ads for old lady slippers. Pffft.
Oh man…FUCK old lady slippers!!!
What a, contrary to all logic, highly uplifting post!! Thank you!!!! Not just the hilarious bits- (“prepare for the dirt nap”- lol!!!) but yes, let’s be grateful for what we’ve got!!! I moan about the shitty state of the world, but, in truth, there are so many things to be thankful for. Well, at least a few.
At any rate, I’d be a bit miffed if my time was up any time soon, too.
I think that junk mail did you and us a big favour!!! (OK, favor to y’all, we spell it wrong).
However, re the clutter- months of junk mail in two huge piles- I’d better sift through it to see if my “Plan” is hidden in there……. Can’t wait.
Thank you so much for this. I am not finding a lot to laugh about these days, but I am trying like hell to laugh anyway.
If you think about it though…it IS the end of the line for that poor tree that sacrificed itself so you could find out about funeral pre-planning. They printed it on his poor carcas. And you won’t even look at it. Poor tree.
I did not consider the tree. I am a monster. Hahahahahaha
I’m not the only person who does mail this way? Maybe this is an acceptable way to adult! (On the other hand, I occasionally get phone calls when I’ve failed to notice an invitation and sometimes forget to collect the mail altogether for weeks at a time. Oops.)
We are cut from the same cloth, it seems.
Throwing away death junk mail is a very romantic thing to do really. Nice job Randy!
He really is very sweet.
I live with a chronic illness, so this is flickering always at the edge of things. (Also depression, which is the more likely reason.)
Anyhoo, I decided to leave my body to a medical school. Medical students need cadavers to work on, and they’re in short supply. Yes, there are artificial substitutes, but those are not nearly good enough.
This turns out not to be all that straightforward! I’m in NY, so I had to apply to a state-wide organization of medical schools and accept their choice, which was fine. But it can’t be done after death, because at that point things have to move very fast.
After the body is finished, it’s cremated; every two years there’s a memorial service for those who gave this gift. The ashes are returned to the family.
I have given instructions that my ashes be mixed with glitter…biodegradable glitter, of course. It exists. I checked.