"A Certain Kind of Death"
they say.
The kind when no one knows you've passed.
Until strangers smell what's left of you
A few weeks later.

The kind that leaves no memory,
No living person to hold onto
the ephemeral trappings -
the thousands of little choices
that surrounded and defined you.

It's death at its most unsentimental.
Death at its rudest.

No one to lament your loss.
Only a public administrator
that calls you "the decedent"
and tries to figure out
whether or not you will end up in "public dispo".

A mass grave
marked only by the year.
With 1600 others that shared your lonely fate.

It's a documentary I watched a few days ago,
while drinking a chocolate protein shake at work.

"That will never happen to me"
I thought to myself,
forgetting that death "happens" to everyone,
and those people with decomposed mouths agape
probably thought the same thing
when breath filled their bodies with life.

And then there was yoga last night.
And Diane, the instructor, had us meditate.
Knees lower than hips, legs crossed, eyes closed.
"Your thumb is the past.
Your index finger is the future.
Where they touch is now - the present moment.
Enjoy this for what it is - the Life Force. This gift."

We have such little time.

Don't we.