Ashes to Asher

He should’ve been a member of the landed gentry, maybe two, three hundred years ago. I’m thinking somewhere in western England, maybe near Wales, though most anywhere in Western Europe would’ve suited him fine. There, he could’ve happily sat alone in his room, daintily drinking his tea, awaiting dinner, waited on servants and maids older than he, surrounded by whichever eccentric books and art alerted his fancy, entertaining visitors (and I do mean entertain), perhaps occasionally patronizing the traveling minstrels and puppet shows that passed through his country hamlet, inviting them in to delight and amuse him. He'd have given them his sincerest applause. And in that state he could’ve lived gloriously useless (and that at a time when to be useless was a compliment), fulfilling the sole function of carrying title, him and his wife of arranged marriage, happily all the days of his life.

Not that I’m saying we should bring back the landed gentry, or that that was somehow a nobler era. Good riddance to 'em and God Bless America, says I. I’m just saying that that one era in history, that one social class, would’ve been a perfect fit for him.

Mom probably would get mad at me for saying so; she'd have told me that back in those dark days, he would've been locked up in some sick asylum, filthy with disease and rats and ticks and such, in stone-cells dank and damp, where sadistic, shifty-eyed doctors in powdered-wigs would poke and prod him mercilessly while self-righteous priests, grown fat on indulgences, cast devils from him, beat him with stripes and called him wicked. Or something.

But this isn't three, two, or even one hundred years ago, and we have social security now and clinics with compassionate, competent professionals and entire academic disciplines dedicated to help with cases as him. I've even edited their dissertations. Sincerely, I'm not dissing on them, I'm just saying that all things considered equal, he should have been of the regency. I think his fastidiousness nature would have made him a perfect fit. He'd probably have made a delightful character in a Jane Austen novel.

But the thing about the past not being the past is that the future will come soon enough, and after we've lowered his casket into the ground and drive home I'll probably unthinkingly put on David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes," and I'll half expect him to suddenly appear and ask with a big ol' grin on his face, saying, "What if Weird Al did a parody called 'Ashes to Asher,' about Pokemon, huh? Do you think that'd be funny?" and that thought would occur to me right when Bowie belts out "I've never done good things/I've never done bad things/I've never done anything out of the blue..." and the tears would stream down my face like the rain from the Washington sky...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Quite frankly, he'll probably outlive us all. He called me once just to tell me that he'd almost been hit by a car but was ok now. Texted everyone he knew about it. He'll be the one listening to Weird Al himself while I'm off to meet my Maker, to be interrogated on how I treated the humblest of God's creations.