Musings of a Retiree on the Macabre
Each morning begins with a peculiar ritual: breakfast first, oral hygiene second. The mere thought of toothpaste mingling with my coffee is, frankly, horrifying. This led me to a rather macabre consideration—if I were to die somewhere between breakfast and brushing my teeth, would the coroner be able to detect my bad breath? Does the absence of breath render all oral odors moot, or do the remnants of our last meal linger in the airless silence of death? Only a coroner could answer such a question, and I pose it with the utmost delicacy.
This breakfast musing inevitably reminds me of another maternal warning from my youth. My mother, with unwavering conviction, insisted I change my underwear daily, lest I end up in a hospital after a car accident. Her concern was less about my wellbeing and more about appeasing the imagined scrutiny of strangers in the event of an untimely demise. I suppose mothers are uniquely attuned to the potential for embarrassment beyond the grave.
But I digress. In the absence of a coroner’s opinion, we must ask ourselves: does the coroner care if the corpse has bad breath? Surely, they have more pressing concerns than my post-mortem halitosis—unless, of course, they possess a particularly sensitive nose. My own sense of smell pales in comparison to my mother’s; she could detect cigarette smoke from a thousand feet away, much to my teenage dismay.
In the end, whether my teeth are brushed or my underwear is clean, I suspect the afterlife is indifferent to such earthly anxieties. Neither the casket nor the crematory is troubled by these concerns. Perhaps peace lies in letting go of such worries, one unbrushed morning at a time.
