We may postpone it, we may tame its violence, but death is still there waiting for us. Death always waits. The door of the hearse is never closed. Dairy farmer and sales executive live in death s shadow, along with Nobel prize winner and prostitute, mother, infant, teen, and old man. The hearse stands waiting for the surgeon who transplant s a heart as well as the hopeful recipient, for the funeral director as well as the corpse he prepares.
Death spares none.
I ll never be a Chinese man, never be a woman, never be a foreigner in this land, never be an only child, but like them, I will die. And you will, too. A century later, in our era, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. We Americans can talk about sex all day long, in subways and on talk shows, but can never mention death. It is our new forbidden topic.