Page 28 - WTP Vol. IX #2

Oprah will die! Oprah will die! Oprah will die! you think as you pump gas at Gas on the Go on Thanksgiving Day. You mean to send her no bad kar- ma, of course. It’s merely a fact. Still, it seems more shocking than other deaths. Oprah will die! Oprah will die! Oprah will die! you feel like shouting it to the world, waking its citizens from their zombie-like stupor. That would do it, you think—Oprah’s death— more shocking than the planet’s death or War in Iraq. Easier to fixate on at any rate.
Shocking, because Oprah doesn’t seem like the type to die. But then who really is the type to die? No one you know, which doesn’t make sense, of course, because everyone’s the type.
Decide that these thoughts are unhealthy at best, as you get back into your car, an ancient Toyota Corolla, its backseat strewn with green-and-white Starbucks coffee cups; stray brown-and-silver Hershey Almond bar wrappers as well as scraps of paper no longer immediately identifiable. Looking at them, wonder why you never buy coffee at local businesses as you intend or cut out chocolate or keep your car clean as other more together and progressive people do. Feel like you can never catch up in an important race that you don’t remember entering but still have to win.
As you leave the Gas on the Go to head up the on- ramp to the thru-way, listen to your inner armchair psychologist who traces the origin of what she calls your “repetitive and compulsive thoughts centered on morbidity” back to the fact that your best friend Lin- nea died suddenly in a boating accident three years ago. She was only 32.
One afternoon you were having margaritas by the lake, waxing poetic about Moxy on Stilts—a local band you’d both been following. Tired from the sun and the drinks, you went into the house to nap. Lin- nea stayed behind to work on her tan. An hour later, you awoke to a loud crash and screams. Outside, in
front of the house, a small crowd had gathered and beyond it, you saw planks of wood sticking up at odd angles, Linnea, dead, speared by the splinter of one, her head dangling from her neck. A drunken boater had slammed into her. He stood, a chubby teddy-bear- like man, dazed beside the wreckage.
Such trauma, a grief counselor explained at the time, has a life-long impact. You believed her then, and you believe her now. Remember that among the many conflicting and devastating emotions of that time, fear dominated many of your most mundane activities. Out on your regular Saturday morning “get-healthy-lose-weight” bike ride, you would think, I could die! I could die! I could die! rolling down the hill near the elementary school that you had previously traversed without thought a hun- dred times. But up until maybe a week ago, those thoughts had largely subsided. Why their reappear- ance now? Three years later? And why in celebrity format? Perhaps, the recent deaths of Peter Jennings and Steve Irwin were responsible. Men who did not seem “the type to die,” (a phrase that has become an irritatingly incessant echo in your mind). Men who seemed to have more of a life because they lived in the TV that you stare at many weeknights from 6 to 11. Odd that someone else could simply take Peter Jennings’ place in the black box without much fan- fare. Shouldn’t there have been a year of mourning,
a year of yellow ribbons placed on TV sets around the country in hopes that Jennings would return? Should we really give up on the dead so easily?
These thoughts do not make sense. So you tell your- self to focus on more important things like the sol- diers dying in Iraq or global warming or even just your internship at the land trust. Know your role there is not exactly the most important, as you merely take notes while your bosses do the heavy-lifting, try- ing to get big landowners to conserve their land for future generations. Still, if you have to think of some part of your 35 years of life with some seriousness, the internship is it. Unlike any other job you’ve had, it fills you with a sense of mission: you are part of sav- ing the land and, more importantly to you, its trees. Touring the parcels that might be preserved, you
find comfort in looking up at the trees’ interlocking branches, holding so many green leaves.
Despite your resolve to stay focused on the saving of the trees or any other substantial matters, your mind returns to celebrity death: Oprah again, then Dr. Phil, Brad and Angelina, Tom and Katie, Jen and
21
Oprah Will Die
Mary lannon