The Day I Died

Not Current Issue

June 27, 2012, started like a typical day.  I was up and preparing breakfast before seven o’clock. I had already checked to see if there were two hummingbirds at my feeders or just one. The bacon was done, my egg was ready, and just as the biscuits were being taken out of the oven I heard Barbara’s phone ringing in the bedroom.  Moments later Barbara came into the kitchen where I was busy buttering biscuits and handed me the phone.

The caller was Floyd McCullough, a long-time friend, who enjoys ribbing me whenever possible.  He told me he saw my obituary in Pontotoc’s weekly newspaper, The Pontotoc Progress, and was calling to confirm it wasn’t really mine.  Of course, the age listed was a dead give-away (no pun intended) that the deceased wasn’t me, as I don’t yet appear to be an eighty-nine year old, but that didn’t stop Floyd from kidding me.

After breakfast, I set about tossing my neighbor’s kudzu back down the hill after pulling it from my shrubbery.  It’s a task I repeat about five times during the warm months until a killing frost stops the dreadful vine in its tracks, where it lies dormant until spring. Having satisfied myself that the kudzu would wallow around for a few weeks before seeking higher ground, I cut some tall hedges at the rear of our house and used my riding mower to pull the limbs to the road to await pick-up by city employees later in the week.

The unseasonable cool morning air coaxed me to start mowing. Yet, mindful of the need to stay hydrated, I went inside to get some water around eleven a.m. and saw I had a missed call from another friend, Kenneth Prewett.

It seems Floyd wasn’t the only person who wanted to confirm the Wayne Carter in the obituary section of the paper wasn’t me. Kenneth shared the deceased was a resident of Arkansas but had a daughter who worked at a bank in Pontotoc.

It was Kenneth’s call that prompted me to post a notice on Facebook so that friends would know I was still around. Within minutes, several friends responded with “likes” or comments thanking me for letting them know my situation. One friend commented her husband reads the obituaries each morning to see if he should go to work.

One of the comments posed the question as to had the obit really been mine, “what would [I] have wanted to get done, said, etc., before kicking the proverbial bucket(list)?” 

The comment was sufficient to remind me that I wrote my own obituary about a year ago.  I doubt anyone will use it, but perhaps, it will serve as a guide for whatever my family chooses to submit to the newspaper.

There are many things I’d like to do before the grim reaper comes calling, but there’s not enough money for me to do them all.  I don’t have a bucket list, per se, but I’ve a short list of things of things I’d like to see and/or do while time permits.  If I’m able to check them off, I’ll start another short list…no sense in rushing myself to complete a lengthy list for fear of dying before completing all the tasks.

I don’t know how many Wayne L. Carters are left, and while I don’t expect to outlive all of them, I hope it’s a while before the name that pops up in the obituaries of the Pontotoc Progress is really mine.