Equestrian?

"When you die they make you into a statue." The preschoolers are discussing death and Bibles while chewing PB&J sandwiches with their mouths open. It's scary. What if the statue is formed from masticated Wonder Bread?

At the State Fair someone carves a likeness of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, or the champion bull from a giant blob of butter. When I die, I hope I won't be sculpted in butter. And when I'm dead, dead and gone, there'll by three sons born wondering how their mom was turned into a Gaston Lachaise "Floating Nude" sculpture!

The talented songwriter Laura Nyro died of ovarian cancer in 1997 when she was only forty-nine. She sold her first song to Peter, Paul, and Mary in 1966. It goes like this:

And when I die and when I'm dead, dead and gone,
there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

I'm not scared of dying and I don't really care.
If it's peace you find in dying, well, then let the time be near.
If it's peace you find in dying, when dying time is here,
just bundle up my coffin cause it's cold way down there,
I hear that's it's cold way down there, yeah, crazy cold way down there.

And when I die and when I'm gone, there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

My troubles are many, they're as deep as a well.
I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell.
Swear there ain't no heaven and pray there ain't no hell,
but I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell,
only my dying will tell, yeah, only my dying will tell.

And when I die and when I'm gone, there'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.

Give me my freedom for as long as I be.
All I ask of living is to have no chains on me.
All I ask of living is to have no chains on me,
and all I ask of dying is to go naturally, only want to go naturally.
Don't want to go by the devil,
don't want to go by the demon,
don't want to go by Satan,
don't want to die uneasy,
just let me go naturally.




© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder