Tomorrow I am having minor surgery on my big toe. But I am here to remind you that surgery is never really minor unless it's being performed on someone else. And even in the same breath your surgeon pronounces it minor he will warn you of that slim chance that since we live in an imperfect world, your minor surgery could turn into a major disaster resulting in your untimely demise. Maybe your surgeon was barely a "C" student and slept through the class on big toe surgery. Or maybe it's the anesthesiologist's first surgery and he hits the wrong button and suddenly you are hovering over the operating table inflated like a Macy's parade balloon with only a vague anesthetized awareness that you are having some sort of out-of-body experience. Later when you suffer a blood clot or develop MRSA, your surgeon, who secretly wanted to major in theatre, will insist that there was nothing "remarkable" about your procedure, keeping mum about how you had to be deflated through your belly button using some pvc pipe, duct tape and basketball needle.
But this isn't my first rodeo. Since the age of 7, doctors have been knocking me out and slicing me open to take out mutant body parts and what have you, so I wasn't really all that worried until a few nights ago. I mean, it's just a big toe, right? But that was before I had this really creepy nightmare. I dreamed (because nobody ever says, "I nightmared") that I was at work but I couldn't find any of my kids for therapy that day and then in the next moment I was transported to my old bedroom circa 1984 where the comforter was this really ugly blue thing with mauve flowers on it. Evidently, part of the nightmare was to remind me that I have always had really bad taste in comforters. But anyway, I am getting dressed and have only made it to the black underwear section of this routine, when I turned suddenly to find what I assume to be the Angel Of Death. Now this was not that blonde sympathetic looking A.O.D. from Touched by an Angel, who ironically enough is now dead. Nor was it the dead sexy Angel from Buffy who wasn't really even an angel at all, but is just too good looking not to mention. If I have to die, it would really soften the blow to have a date with David Boreanaz on my way out. But no, this A.O.D. was straight out of the dark madness of Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol or the Little Orphant Annie poem my sister used to read to us when we were kids. Cloaked all in black, he had chin-length black hair--that is if he even had a chin. He appeared to have no facial features. Just a spooky black figure with no sense of humor at all. For some reason upon seeing this terrifying creature the only thing I could think of to say is, "I'm not dressed appropriately for this occasion" and then giggled like an idiot which is what I always do when I am nervous. A.O.D. was not amused. Instantly I am bombarded with a big ole bucket list of regrets. The knowledge that I was losing the chance to ever become a Solid Gold Dancer, write the great American novel, or grow a decent set of boobs swept over me and then pulled me under. The next thing I know, I am screaming "NO!" yet at the same time stepping forward into scary dude and from there was just assimilated into him. I was no more.
I awakened from that dream completely freaked out and sure that it was a sign. I tried to convince myself that one of the perks of being a "good Christian girl" is that God doesn't send creepers to pick you up for the ride home, but maybe David Boreanaz had another gig. The funny thing was that as scared as I was of Death, it was the unfinished business that I found unbearable. This is the point where I am supposed to say something poignant about how we should all accomplish all of our life's dreams and goals and crap like that, but I'm not because: 1) I hate platitudes 2) we are all pretty much doing the best we can with that already and 3) some dreams just shouldn't come true. For example, not everyone who dreams of becoming president should actually become president for the well being of the rest of us.
Instead, as my boyfriend suggested, maybe I should just get my affairs in order so I feel more secure. Even that is asking a lot of me since I have the organizational skills of a chimpanzee, so I will just hit it in the high places: 1) I want a Viking funeral--I can't stress this enough. Don't waste money on cremation when you can just light the pyre at the party and roast marshmallows over my body. Spend the money on the party. 2) I leave all my worldly possessions to my daughters, including the bulb syringes from when you were born; the dream catcher over my bed that obviously doesn't work; and the rights to my greatest hits album, "Songs I make up in the Shower" 3) to the rest of you I bequeath the only wisdom I have gained in this life and that is this: wherever you are right now, whether good or bad, it's temporary. So savor the good and hang on through the bad because tomorrow will be something else altogether different. Oh, crap! That was a platitude. On the upside of all of this, if I do die, I might get to meet Davy Jones up close instead of like our last less intimate meeting when he was on the stage at Hamilton Place Mall and I was yelling down at him from the second floor. "You're still the groooooviest!"
At any rate, my little sister, Darlene has agreed to take me to the hospital and play my next of kin. If anything should go awry, she will have the power to decide whether or not they should put me on life support or just suffocate me with a pillow and scoop out my working organs with a melon baller. Hopefully she has forgotten about all the bad stuff from when we were kids like the time I hit her so hard with a hair brush that it broke. Or that I insisted that we found her in a basket on the front porch when she was a baby. Surely she has forgiven me for all that, but I did notice that she already has the pillow in her car. I just keep telling myself that everything’s going to be alright. After all it was just a dream. And it’s just a big toe…
