NYC...To Die For

These days if someone asked me where in the world I would most like to live, I’d probably answer by telling them where I’d most like to die. I know that can appear to sound morbid, however, the seed for this way of thinking started way back in the day.

In my twenties I used to go to Kundalini yoga classes on the regular in NYC’s East Village. While holding poses for long stretches at a time, the yogi instructor would go down some spiritual rabbit hole which quite honestly, I enjoyed immensely. During one such class, he began one of these little asides. He said, “Imagine you are on your death bed. You are looking back on your life. What do you see? Imagine that life you want to live, now go live it.”

Yup, that was it. That was the life changing yoga class for me, or as Oprah would put it…having an Aha moment. I gave serious thought at a young age, with the acute awareness of death, how I wanted to live my life. And that thought has continued to inform me for most of my life.

And ironically, it was one of the moments that brought me to Nashville. I knew I wanted to pursue songwriting as a career, or at least give it a try, because I knew I did not want to be on my death bed thinking of all the what ifs or if only dot dot dot…fill in the blank, things I did not pursue or at least try in my life.

Somewhere along the way, the thought of how I want to live my life turned into imagining where and how I might want to die. One thing became pretty clear to me…I realized I didn’t want to die in Nashville. While living in the South has been good to me in many ways, no disrespect to my Southern friends, it’s just an inner recognition that I’ve been a fish out of water in what is now half my life here, so the thought of being buried in the ground in Tennessee, well, there’s something that just does not sit right with me about the whole death locale of it all. I just don’t think I would truly rest in peace. I fear I may actually turn into some kind of ghost that starts haunting the place, tormented for eternity. Oh, wasn’t there a movie about some girl named Carrie that had an ending like that?

And, no, I’m saying I want to die in New York City, as in being pushed in front of a train, or hit by one of those electronic bikes, or stepping out by accident in front of a bus. If I have a say in all this, I’d like to imagine I die in my sleep of old age in an Upper West Side six, or that Park Ave doorman building. Come to think of it, it would probably be the doorman who finds me.

Now since I want to envision a peaceful Manhattan ending and not a haunted scenario...it seems I may need to find a way back to NYC at some point, preferably while I am still a youngish older person and can enjoy what’s left of life.

Oh, I forgot to add, I’ve informed my son, I’d want my ashes spread in the Sinai desert on the coast of the Red Sea, a place called Nueiba, part of the southern peninsula of the Sinai desert that once was a part of Israel. Not sure how he’s going to handle that.

Years ago, I mistakenly gave away the last family plot in Brooklyn, NY to my cousin who didn’t even need it at the time.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, as I acknowledge in my own way the inevitable fact of life for all of us, that no one lives forever, I find some comfort in thinking I get to own my wishes, even if I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot of living to do…