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I hope this is not too morbid for a Friday.
I wish to be dressed in black tie, white dinner jacket, in bare feet. I wish to be shrouded completely in white sailcloth, heavy lead weights clipped to the eyelets of my shroud. I wish to be placed upon an oaken board worn smooth, and tipped into the billowing Pacific at a red-sky dusk from a great height as Taps are played on a bugle. I wish that an audio recording be made of the splash so that my wife (who is prone to seasickness) may have a memory of my final disposition.
I wish then, as my weighted remains flutter languidly to the ocean floor, that my eldest son would read the lullaby we sing him each night.
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
I wish to be committed to the deep.
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