Hey you, up there or down there or wherever you are, (if indeed, you are anywhere), I’ve got a bone to pick with you.

It’s about this plan that you’ve come up with for all living things.  I’ve just got a few questions about it, and, if you can stand the audacity of it, I’ve got a few suggestions for you too.

Now, I hope that you don’t get all bent out of shape about what I’m about to say.  Your wrath is legendary, and trust me, I want NOTHING to do with boils or locusts or pillars of salt of firestorms that destroy entire cities.

Please take this for what it is – a few opinions from one solitary and fairly limited man. Okay?

You sure?

Okay then…no brimstone, right?

All right, here goes.

If you ask me, your whole set-up of bringing forth life forms, having them live for a few years, and letting them get old and die…well…the plan just sucks. Truly. It’s a shitty plan.

When I was young, I was extremely active. You would never catch me indoors when I was a kid. Never. Part of the reason I hated school so much, (and, consequently, one major reason why I did so poorly in grade school and high school) was because I wanted to be outside. 

I’d be climbing trees, playing pick-up games of baseball or football. (Nothing “organized”, mind you.  No uniforms, or adults, or practices…or rules.), running just for the sake of running, building forts in the woods, going swimming, riding bikes. I’d go full-tilt from sun up to sun down. If my parents wanted to punish me, all they had to do was send me into the house.

And if I fell out of a tree, I got bruised or got the wind knocked out of me. I would be incapacitated for, oh, five minutes or so, and then I be right back into the mix of things.

There were a few exceptions to this recovery rate.  Once, when I was riding my bicycle down a steep hill, I suddenly became curious about what would happen if I stuck my bare foot into the spinning spokes of the front tire.  So I did it…on purpose. Not one of my brightest moves.  The bike came to a screeching halt, and I went over the handlebars, landing on the pavement with two cracked bones in my foot. In about three weeks, I was up and riding yet again.

Once I was in Montana, and my Uncle Bobby was giving me a piggyback ride.  He pretended he was a bucking bronco and went racing across a grassy field with me on his shoulders. He stepped in a prairie dog hole and we both crashed to the ground.  He was fine. I broke my collar bone. 

Again, it seems like it was just a couple of weeks, and I was fighting to get out of the sling that my parents and the doctor made me wea .

Now, I’ve fifty-five.   

I got bucked off my horse six freaking weeks ago, and it still hurts!  Twelve visits to the chiropractor later, it STILL is a painful event just getting out bed in the morning!

What gives?

You couldn’t have designed us any better than this?

REALLY?

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror yesterday without knowing that a mirror was present…and I saw …an old man. Crow’s feet around the eyes.  Skin sagging around the chin.  Receding, white hair. I was amazed when I realized I was looking at my own face.  That ain’t me.  That may be what I LOOK like now, but trust me, that ain’t me!

My buddy Merton died three weeks ago.  His body just gave out.  He was a mere seventy years old, and now he’s gone…Forever. I’ll never see him again.

The same with my grandparents and father and about four dozen pets that I’ve had so far in my life.  Friends with whom I grew up and went to school. All gone. And every one of their departures was excruciatingly painful.

It’s not good.

Are you listening? I’m telling you that there’s gotta be a better way of doing things.

There is way too much pain and sorrow involved with this living thing. 

When we’re young, we get addicted to youth and resilience and pain-free movement.  And then we wake up one morning, and we’re old and we need junk like viagra and Metamucil just to perform normal bodily functions! 

Ain’t right.

It would be better if we were born old, and stayed that way until we died.  Then, there would be no deterioration. No longing for what we once had. If we didn’t have anything to which we could compare our decrepit state, then it wouldn’t be so bad.

OR, even better, don’t let us get decrepit! Let us just live to the fullest and then one day, in mid-run or mid-sentence just…stop.

And death. Who the hell ever thought up that wonderful concept?  You couldn’t come up with anything better?  What about just glorious whole-body ascensions into Heaven? I know you can do it! You already have! You did it for Christ’s mom! Right? So why not?

OR, if you insist on having us die at the end of our lives on Earth, at least give us some assurance that:

1.        You really do exist,

And  2. There IS an afterlife!

It would sure make it a lot more jovial at the graveside services if we were absolutely certain that we were going to see Uncle Joe, or Mom, or even Dixie the Dog again!

I never did understand the need for all of this hush-hush, mysterious mumbo-jumbo about Heaven and afterlife.  If it’s there, why not just show us and be done with it?!

Well, it’s getting late, and it’s time to take my stool-softener.

But, do me a favor, will you?  If you’re really out there, and you’ve heard what I’ve said…well, just think about some of the stuff, will you?

And please, don’t get pissed at me.

Good night.