Sailing off the edge of the map

While walking home today, musing on the latest tidbits of gore news I’ve been glowing over the last week, my again thoughts turned to language and the words we use to express ourselves. The best part about gore news is how every story ends the same: in death.

No matter what language we use, death seems a sticky topic for us humans: especially in common speech. Reporters may use that sterile, icy word to describe the ‘passing’ of a celebrity, but we mostly avoid it in polite conversation.

Humans never die.

Your cat can die. Your cell phone battery can die. Your computer’s network connection can die. The chrysanthemums you keep on your windowsill will die if you don’t water them.

But grandma? Grandma doesn’t die: she ‘passes away’ or ‘passes on.’

And before you think I’m going to go on another tirade of blasting Americans, I’ll note we aren’t the only ones with this fear. The ancient Egyptians were just as leerie of death as modern Americans: they said someone ‘journeyed west.’ China’s 1.1 billion adore Sun Wukong and his journey west, so taking a journey that way doesn’t seem so bad. Instead, they prefer to qu shi—they head off to a whole new world!

I suppose that’s better than Japan, where they’d say dear old grandma nakunarimashita—was lost. Oops! We sent her to the hospital with a heart attack and just never saw her again. She must be lost! Let’s hope she makes it back in time for the Festival of Drinking and Watching Cherry Blossoms.

Still. World-over, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any culture with more euphemisms for death and dying than modern America. A visit to a doctor’s office in the US will find you confronted by a wall of pamphlets ready to introduce the crazy new concept.

These pamphlets are mostly useless, because Americans never say die. They’re like Goonies.

When one’s ‘number is up,’ he takes just ‘the big sleep.’ If he’s not ready to ‘move on up,’ he can go out kicking.’ Americans like to kick a lot of things, especially ‘buckets’ and ‘cans.’ The less aggressive prefer to ‘kiss the dust’ before they’ve ‘left the building’ for ‘a little slumber.’

If they’re hungry, they ‘bite the big one’ or ‘bite the dust.’ Queen fans seem to be biggest on biting, but I’m betting Eagles fans prefer gambling. They ‘cash in their chips’ just before ‘checking out’ to go ‘climb the Golden Staircase,’ or, if I may nod to Led Zepplin, ‘pay the piper’ and ‘climb the Stairway to Heaven.’

And what will one do once he’s up there?

Well, after it’s ‘curtains,’ he’ll be up there ‘cooking for the Kennedys’—if he’s a good enough cook, he might get a chance to ‘join the angels’ in ‘the sweet hereafter.’

Regardless of his culinary skills, he can still ‘join the majority.’

We don’t like to think about this, but not everyone gets to ‘climbs the staircase.’ Some people have to ‘walk the downward path’ and spend eternity in ‘the dread abode.’

Even worse than having to ‘head downstairs,’ every now and then, one unlucky guy ‘fades away’ and ends up ‘on the road to nowhere.’ If you one day find yourself stuck with nowhere to go, I suggest you roll over and give Byron’s ‘dreamless sleep’ a try—it sounds like a good chance to get in a few ‘eternal yawns.’

If sleeping and staircases aren’t for you, the gangsters say you can ‘give up the ghost’ and go ’sleep with the fishes’—usually this one requires some assistance to pull off. If there’s no time to ‘get a pair of cement shoes,’ you may just end up ’six feet under’—but that’s a great place to be if you’re ‘going into the fertilizer business!’

However you choose to ‘fade out,’ it seems a great chance for one last party. I’ve never been a fan of formal-wear, but serial killers don’t seem to mind. When they die, a lot of them ‘go to a necktie party.’ I heard several kids in Pakistan went to one over winter break. The media says they saw how much fun Saddam was having and couldn’t pass it up. Other killers ‘ride the lightning.’ I saw that one while it was under construction at Cedar Point and it looked like a coaster fan’s wet dream.

When they’re not kidnapping Korean fishermen for ransom, pirates cover a lot of ground both here and in the ‘hereafter.’ Sometimes they ‘take a long rest’ in ‘the Fiddler’s Green,’ but if they haven’t had enough briny sea-air, they can ‘flag down the Flying Dutchman’ for eternal adventure. The unlucky ones get dragged down to ‘Davy Jones’s Locker.’

In this modern age of science, computer geeks have one of the most creative ways to get ‘exported to a flat file’—they’re ‘formatted.’ I suppose it works because, these days, most of them are Hindus.

We technical writers just aren’t as savvy. We tend to end up ‘lost in translation’ after ‘moving into upper-management.’ After that, we just go ‘permanently out of print.’

However Americans choose to ’shed this mortal coil,’ almost every way sounds more fun than plain vanilla death. Yet, regardless of how gaily they jest about ‘the next great adventure,’ Americans squirm when someone casually mentions ‘the “D” word.’

When you get down to it, death is just a part of life, and it’s one most aren’t prepared to face. But we have to face it eventually. George Carlin says death is the one thing that’s truly democratic: everyone gets it once.

The point of this post is I’ve found a word to solve our ‘departing’ dilemma: a word so when it’s time for each of us to ‘express-mail our soul to the god of our choice,’ none needs bat an eye. It’s perfect, because despite that last god reference, it works for atheists too. After all, Einstein says energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

‘Recalled.’

Doesn’t that sound nice? “Grandpa was recalled while he was on the table. He won’t be joining us for Christmas.”

Imagine the dialogue between a nurse and a man who’s wife died in labor. “Mr. Smith, I’m sorry to inform you your wife’s labor had complications. She was recalled.”

“Where did mommy go?”
“Son … you’re old enough to hear this. Your mommy was … ‘recalled.’”

Factories can recall bad products; some even recall old products. Car companies do it all the time—especially Firestone, famous for its tires that explode after 500 miles.

Let’s face it, products deteriorate with age, and some are way too dangerous to be allowed on the road: look no further than any 60-year-old granny behind the wheel of a two-year-old Cadillac STS Child Shredder if you need an example.

So, dear readers, I hope you’ll coöperate to bring this word into common use. It’s sterile enough for the politically correct, and it’s accurate.

Besides, ‘recalled’ nicely complements ‘defective,’ a word we already use to describe humans who fail to pass inspection when they roll off the assembly line.

I’ll stop here before I go off on ‘defective.’

This writer needs to go to bed before he ends up ‘formatted with black borders’ or ’struck out by the Big Blue Pencil.’ I’m still recovering from a bout with pneumonia, and this week’s paper would be a mess if I were ‘orphaned.’