DIAGNOSE TOD

It’s a terrible feeling when you have to go to the doctor. It’s even worse when bad news awaits you there. Either way, the drive to the doctor’s office is a reflection of your own messed-up life. If only I’d exercised more back then, eaten healthier, traded that office chair for a beach bar. Where I’m going, there’s no beach. Nor is there a bar, which is exactly what you need most in such situations. No beer, just dire news awaits. Coffin nails to go. The clinically clean, disinfectant-reeking grave awaits me. Waits until I enter and hand me the final death sentence on a slightly crumpled, gray-green slip of paper. Prescription in hand, you then burst into the pharmacy and slam the thing down on the bewildered pharmacist. Politely, but firmly. It has to be quick. Everything in one go, no questions asked. Please, thank you, goodbye. Healing to go. Bless you. Peace, joy, and happiness.

The journey to the doctor’s office, however, is a revelation. If I make it out of this hellhole alive, things are going to change! They have to! Standing just outside the door, listening to the birds one last time, sucking the filthy city air deep into your veins, you finally grasp the finality of these very last actions. How you’ve wasted your life! Inside, the far too friendly receptionist waits with a broad grin. She’s grinning because she’s on the right side and doesn’t have to receive her certain death sentence. She’s only receiving me, the still-living wreck. Off to the waiting room, where the other walking dead guard the door to the blindingly bright light. Every five minutes, the gates of hell open, and one of the corpses crosses the threshold, slips into infinity—and probably won’t come out again. The longer this dying off, this genocide of the old, the weak, and the sick, drags on, the more one longs for a swift end.

Then it’s your turn: The door opens, the goddess in her robe stands before you, the clipboard of the Ten Commandments firmly under her arm. So this is it, au revoir beautiful life! As you take a seat and this holy figure stands before you, scrutinizing you skeptically, you feel like jumping at her leg and howling, screaming, begging for forgiveness. I’ve been naughty! Please heal me! HELP!! Thousands of tears blur my vision, and my weightless body is just waiting to be shattered by the final diagnosis of the Supreme Court. Doctor God adjusts her glasses, raises her index finger admonishingly, ready to deliver hell on earth, and mumbles her dreadful verdict upon me:

“The diagnosis is: ‘You have diarrhea.‘”

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