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Death Certificates

I have become a reluctant collector of death certificates. I am trying to remember why this was even on my spirit this morning, maybe something that was said on the Ear Hustle podcast. Yes, it was one of the silly questions asked in one of their magazine segments, what kind of pizza would you be? My answer was a simple cheese pizza with a single topping pepperoni, and the reason was this was same order my mom made when she treated me and my siblings to pizza.

When I order pizza as an adult if I am ordering a topping it is usually pepperoni, I am not saying I haven't tried other toppings but my go-to is plain cheese with pepperoni. This then lead me to think I had mis-remembered her date of death because it made for a better story saying she died four days before my eleventh birthday. Something in my head was saying that was just a story and not the actual date of death. I searched my tablet and couldn't find a picture of her death certificate which was odd because my fathers and his mothers were right there.

This lead me to my safe to get out my copy of her death certificate which I scanned and photographed to fix the previous oversight. Her date of death was actually April 4th, 19XX, which is actually a week before my eleventh birthday once again even in my storytelling my bad math was at play. So I wasn't lying, she died right before my birthday. Happy Birthday. #🥳

Since I had her certificate out this was a good time to look at the comparisons between hers, my fathers and my grandmothers. Michael, who I guess was indeed real, is the one who reported our mom's death. It has been forty years since I had seen this "older brother" that I had been to doubt that he existed, but here he was right on this official document, so I guess I did/do have an older brother, how much older isn't clear to me and probably never will be.

My father's certificate was reported by his mother, I guess this was appropriate since his parents after prodding by his aunt were the ones to discover him dead in his Harlem apartment. Now I also had to verify another piece of information about his death, I have always told the story that my parents died at the same age nine years apart. Officially he died a month before his birthday which would indeed make him forty-three years old, the same age his youngest son would follow him in death. But I have a tendency to round up and he would have been forty-four if he had survived another month. I like the repetitive numbers, 84, 44, 40. And my favorite superhero team is the Fantastic Four so all these fours line up with mystic numerology.

Curiously since both of my parents died at forty-four I didn't feel great about getting past that number myself, its and odd feeling to be older than your parents ever were, but I am not the one who should have been worried, my late younger brother who basically smoked himself to-death followed his dad at the exact same age. I think my late brother was born in nineteen eighty, which means he was thirteen when he lost our father. But four when I lost my moms, another four. He died two year after our grandmother, I think our shared last grandparent.

Causes of death were quite different, my moms carcinoma of breast with metastasis, dads undetermined, but the family assumption is something related to his exposure to agent orange during the Vietnam war. Not sure if there is a thing as a good death, but my grandmother's cause is listed as hypertensive cardiovascular disease, probably related to the congestive heart failure she was diagnosed with, but it was old age. I am curious where do they get cause of death from? I don't recall ever using the term "hypertensive cardiovascular disease" as cause of death. I also don't remember giving out doctors information. I guess its all moot now.

Too bad I won't ever know what my death certificate says or who will be my informant. I feel a way having this much hands-on experience with death certificates, with my moms it was about being able to cash in the payable-upon-death bonds she had purchased for me. My father I think it was just information because he had no discernible estate and made no kind of preparations for his progeny, pretty typical to how he lived. My grandmothers was tied to an inheritance, a word frankly I wasn't really involved with until her death. It was curious that during her life she thought someone was studying her wealth, when frankly I know I wasn't, but as I even told her sister regardless of that, I was no fool and I wouldn't leave a penny on the table and I didn't.

I would love to say I am indifferent to death, having had so much during my lifetime. I can say definitively that when my time comes I will be ready to go, no kicking and screaming here. My preference would be to die like my moms or grandmother at home. But we know like in life our preferences aren't usually honored especially in the last preference we will ever have.

[Photo by Brown Estate]

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