I have become convinced over the past 20 years, that I am destined to die a late-seventy-something old man, in a soiled refrigerator box over a heating grate, behind a dumpster.   Someone will find me frozen on a sub-zero morning, huddled amongst hamburger bags and cast-off blankets and shoes.   They’ll pull a rusty, out-of-tune Lee Oskar B-flat harmonica from my fingers and find a sheaf of old stories under my head.  My only other possessions will be a bottle of frozen water, some stolen headache pills and a picture of my daughter. 

Everything is pointing that way.  The future is like a giant “Road Work 500 Feet Ahead” display at night: frightened lights flashing dire consequence and pointing all in one direction.  Everything is narrowing down to one impatient lane. 

My sister, bless her heart, once told me that I can come and live in a hammock on her deck before it gets to that.  You have no idea how comforting that offer, even if tongue-in-cheek, is to have stashed away at the moment.

•      •      •

I turned 60 a short while back.  I’m well over the top and heading down the backhill slide, picking up speed and hitting the turns pretty hard.  My Dad died at 73, of complications resulting from the same sun-abused skin that I now own.  For him, it started in the skin, moved to the lymph nodes, then quickly to the pancreas and finally the stomach.  He died in pain and loneliness.  At the very end, I missed getting there by just hours, passing him at 30,000 feet, heading in opposite directions, 45 minutes south of the Philadelphia airport.    

I’ve done the math.  I figure that I can still weather at least another six to ten complete nervous breakdowns before I push on through to the other side.  I get, usually, six months to a year between breakdowns, so, say minimum: 36 months to 10 years.  Ballpark.

Then it’s brave new world.

By that point I’ll have picked up maximum downhill speed and will have attained escape velocity.  At that point, the ramp will level off and arch into the air just a bit… launching me in a high, upward, outward arc.  I will come flying out the back side of that refrigerator box like a ski-jumper learning into the wind.

And then, like Harry Houdini, Amelia Earhardt and Elvis, I'll try to write.  I'll send back souvenirs.  Look carefully next time you pass a late-seventies-something homeless man sleeping on a bench or in a box.  The messages will sound vaguely like sleepless, nervous snoring and smell like frozen dumpster grease.