Category: Birth

What if Death Quit Her Job?

Posted on July 23, 2021 by Kathryn Atkins

Would we rejoice?

Maybe. But what about her?

Death has had nothing but sadness in her day job. No one likes her. No one wants to see her coming. She clearly does not enjoy her work. Who would? Coming to work is depressing. “Hello, Mrs. Jones. I’m going to take your soul today.” And guess what? She has very few (no) friends.

And you thought you had a bad job.

Somewhere along the way, Death ended up collecting souls as part of the team in Heaven. Eventually she finds out why. And that’s not to say everyone goes to heaven after they die. No. That’s not it. And that’s not Death’s job, you see. She just makes the rounds according to the schedule and collects the souls so the other departments can get them to the correct eternity. You know. If you sin too much, you go to Hell. If you’ve accumulated enough brownie points, as it were, you get to spend eternity in Heaven. Everything is free there. Free health club memberships, country club passes, zoos, museums…It’s all free. It’s fun in the beginning but well. Everything gets boring after a while. Even Perfection. And free booze.

Back to Death. She definitely wins top prize for “sucky job” and to offset her terrible work life, she buys beautiful clothes. Her retail therapy outings have earned her the nickname Coco for Coco Chanel, her favorite designer. But she can wear Vera Wang, too. Betsey Johnson, Calvin Klein. It doesn’t matter as along as it’s expensive and gorgeous. But Chanel is her bestie.

When our story opens, Death quits. Yup. Finally, she’s had it up to here. The cruise ships are the absolute worst. Bodies and their attached souls float around in the ocean shivering their lips off, and Death has to handle each person. Some are still alive, and in every manner of scared to death. And then Death comes by. Imagine. Cold. Wet. Make it freezing, soaked. Almost drowning or recently drowned. (What a crappy way to go!) “It’s okay, Mr. Smith. I’m here to help you pass peacefully.” BAM. Mr. Smith bops Death in the jaw. “Oh, no you don’t!” The arguments over the years would make your hair hurt. Seriously. Death has heard them all. But now, she’s decided to quit.

And it’s not pretty. You can read all about it in my book, Deathlist, coming to a bookstore near you. There’s a lot more to it than Coco Chanel and Death, however. I’d hang on to your bucket seats. It’s quite a ride. Funny. Philosophical. Profane. Good and evil. Life’s purpose. High concept stuff wrapped around a book in which God plays too much golf, and the Holy Spirit is almost as much a clothes horse as Death. And there are epic battles afoot, Stay tuned for more posts about this crazy novel. Until then, I’m thinking we want Death to keep her job. Just sayin’.

The Early Worm

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Kathryn Atkins

Our grandchild awaits. We’re waiting too! Oh my. What are the chances that babies even happen??? HAHA.

My ears burn
as the world turns
to discern
a pattern
that music earns
when it learns
of font kerns
that overturn
Van Cliburn
a piano churn
that upturns
a smile downturned
when the butter churn
burns
to spurn
the early worm.
It’s their turn
to get the bird.

Where Are You From?

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Kathryn Atkins

I am from the stars. Dust. Silver-striped meteorites blown to bits by a goddess’s rage at being shunned by her lover. He left in the middle of the night the day before yesterday in cosmic time, which could have been before the earth existed. Or it could have been a second ago.

I am from the beach. Sand. Washed ashore with kelp around my waist, starfish nibbling at my toes. My scalp teems with tiny organisms that lived there until now. They try to scamper back to the salty sea, yet their microcosmic feet tangle in my hair.

I am from the mountains. Rock. From high above the valley, I look down on the birdless trees. I am pummeled by the weather. Rain. Snow. Sun. Melt. Repeat. Rain. Snow. Wind. Ice. Sun. Melt. Repeat. . .

I am from Mom’s egg.
And from Dad’s sperm.

I am, I guess.

Foster Kid

Posted on November 7, 2019 by Kathryn Atkins

It might have been the right thing to do.

Life’s a Crapshoot

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Kathryn Atkins

Did you watch it? The storybook Royal Wedding? What did you take from it? That there’s no predicting life. No one would have thought a Hollywood starlet would marry an honest-to-goodness prince. Well, not in real life. In stories. In movies. On TV. But not for real. But it was. Real.

Rolling the Dice

crapshoot2 Back in 2006, I was becoming increasingly aware of egg donors facilities. Yes. I was pretty amazed that people were picking characteristics they wanted for their children and were buying eggs that they thought would make little people with those traits. What’s cool is that it doesn’t work that way. At least not yet. Thank goodness. For instance, neither of our children plays the piano by ear, but I do. On the other hand, I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag, but our younger son is crazy-good at drawing, painting, sketching, shading, faces (for gosh sakes), and composition. How nice a surprise. Right?

Is life a game of chance? I think it is deliciously so. In fact, I say throw all the eggs and sperm in a piñata and do a free-for-all blindfolded party burst. Then grab the gametes and zygotes that lie on the ground, smash them together and you’ll have a kid — any old kid, and the future means nothing, the past means nothing, and lineage has no meaning whatsoever. Birthrights mean doodly squat. The Kennedy clan has had more than its share of problems, right?

You can be born and given up for adoption. You can be born into squalor. You can come into the world with an affliction. You can start your life in a palace. And sometimes that, too, can be bad luck! What. Dee. Heck?

People that are born of two parents bring recessive and dominant genes to the party. The randomness of the different permutations produces hugely disparate kids of the same two parents, no matter how many kids they have. It’s the scary-wonderful, elegant and inelegant magic of it all. We keep doing it through the centuries, and sometimes we make a mess of it, and sometimes, it’s a beautiful thing, this life.

Life’s a crapshoot right from the beginning, and that’s all there is to it. There should be more, somehow, but there isn’t.

ADOPTED

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Kathryn Atkins

It didn’t start out to be about me, but it was. In fact, it’s not about me! But LOL, it is about me. And it’s about lots of other folks like me who were adopted without knowing who their real parents were. And still don’t.

A reporter in the HARO (Help A Reporter Out) space needed a few quotes about adoption. I replied that I was willing to help her. The reporter, Chandra Evans, interviewed me and the result is in this article, which turned out to be quite a lot — more than I thought she would be using.

It did get me to thinking about what happened back then, and about the meaning of life. We’re who we are from our genes. YES, I did 23 and me to see who I really was, but the numbers aren’t me. I am me. My brother, Bob, is my brother (also adopted). My adopted mom and dad were my mom and dad. That’s the whole banana right there.

Did “23andme” give me closure? No. But life (I say this all the time, and some people don’t like it) is a crapshoot. No guarantees as to where, when, how, or to whom you are born. Life happens to us all, and what we make of it after we’re here is why we’re here.

Finding out why is what makes it fun. Finding out why is what makes us nuts. Whether you’re adopted or not makes no difference, really.

Remember: Steve Jobs was adopted. ‘Nuf said.

Death in the Garden of Eden

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Kathryn Atkins

aa026359 Death sat curled up in a large swinging wicker chair in the long shuttered Garden of Eden. The warm breeze smelled of plumeria. A colorful macaw bobbed on a branch of that famous tree. The snake near the tree knew who the beautiful woman was, and recoiled from her, even though she really had no jurisdiction over the animal kingdom. Still the snake stayed his distance.

A bright green frog peeked up from under a leaf. The rest of nature’s creatures crowded around in a careless exhalation of extraordinary beauty. Death went there sometimes to think things through. She loved the natural habitat and the irony: the Garden of Eden had actually been the beginning of the end: the birthplace of man’s mortality. Had those two humans (symbolic or not) never been “human” by succumbing to temptation, they would not have known death or Death, either one. The latter smiled at the irony.

Did Adam and Eve not know these words at the time: “… and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”? Death decided they didn’t know or chose not to heed the words because they were lead into, and they were not delivered from. The forbidden fruit was the temptation on that fateful day. Today, the Deathlist is the forbidden fruit. It’s man’s quest to know all there is to know. And this knowledge, this Deathlist, has been as nasty and unforgiving as the sin in the Garden of Eden. And as before, they’re paying for it.

“But perhaps we can still fix it,” Death said to those creatures around her. “The Deathlist that is. Adam and Eve’s little slip is way too far gone. But the Deathlist… maybe yes.”

Death arose from her chair, nodded to the pretty frog and raised an eyebrow in the snake’s direction. He flinched. Death chuckled, pleased with herself, and left.

Death Is Not Random

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Kathryn Atkins

Death is not random. It just looks like it. Freak accidents. Chance missteps. Absurd consequences of non-events.

Birth is not random. Looks like it but it’s not! How’d you get here, then? Of all the little eggs that don’t get fertilized down there, How…Did… YOU…Come…To…Be?

Planning, I tell you, planning.

It’s the same on the other end. Your death is as planned as your life. The slots are all there, waiting to be filled. Yours was waiting to be filled by you when your egg and sperm met in a specifically non-random mating of DNAs. It was a carefully planned time. It had to be. Why would anything as important as your life be a result of a capricious, haphazard encounter?

So if you accept that the beginning of YOU was very well planned, then you should be able to agree that the end of you is also. You were not present for the beginning. You didn’t know your birthdate. And you cannot know your death date…yet. But what if you could? What…If…You…Could… know when you were going to die? What would you do with that information?