Lest we forget

Remembrance Day. A day for remembering so many important events and people. I love it that even the transit buses bear signs reminding us of the importance of this date. 

The radio has been full of amazing stories of remembering. If you have 15 or so minutes to spare, I'd recommend listening to Matt Galloway's sensitive interview with Candy Greff, this year's Silver Cross Mother who will lay a wreath at the War Memorial in Ottawa. 

One of the people I always remember this day is Kurt Vonnegut. Because today would have been his 100th birthday, it seemed like a good time to interview him again, something he once told me would happen again, so I guess, here we go: 

Interviewer: Well, I suppose the first thing I need to say besides hello again would have to be Happy Birthday. How does it feel to be turning one hundred?

Kurt Vonnegut: What an interesting reminder. Birthdays aren't really of any importance anymore. You must have forgotten how meaningless time is here. Calendars, dates, and whoa -- leap year (what a concept) -- those things are meaningless here. Though thinking of calendars, I recall some lovely scenic images that appeared on those. 

Int: But really, Mr Vonnegut, don't you have any thoughts about having a life that now would have spanned a century?

KV: A century, a minute, a year. It's all the same. When you get here, you'll understand that. As for what it might have been like to turn 100 on earth, I suppose I would have been given a medal or something equally useless to commemorate hanging around that long. And no doubt, the aches and pains I was already learning about would have only been worse. Really, I think I managed to check out at just about the right time. 

Int: Do you ever wish that you could come back?

KV: Not a chance!!

Int: Well, that was a speedy response. Can you comment further?

KV: They've already invited me to go back. There's a whole coterie of folks who think they might do better if they went back. 

Int: Really? Who are some of those we might be looking for again?

KV: You probably won't recognize them, as they won't get the same body, but plenty of folks seem eager enough to go back they'll hang around at the transit stations like puppy dogs hoping for adoption. Some of them whose names you might recognize are Diana Spencer, Adolf Hitler, Jim Morrison -- and oh yes, Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy. 

Int: That's quite a list. And really, Hitler??

KV: Oh, you don't have to worry. He's been banned from ever going back. He's actually kind of pathetic, as he can't even paint any more, but tries sketching portraits outside whichever station he's decided to haunt. 

Int: And those others you mentioned? 

KV: Well, the Kennedy-Monroe request is especially tricky, as they want to go back so they can be together, but the only way that works is if they go back as twins, and that's not really what they're hoping for. As for Diana, even princesses don't get everything they want, though I thought that was one of the lessons she'd already learned. 

Int: What about you? When are you coming back?

KV: They've invited me -- more than once. But I keep turning them down. I mean really, there's hardly a continent that doesn't have some kind of war going on. Besides, the planet is basically melting. 

Int: Gosh, you're depressing me. Why do you do that?

KV: That's not my intention, dear. I'm only doing what I always did -- trying to make you think. 

Sadly, at that, he disappeared, back into wherever/whatever it is where he now dwells. Maybe next year, 101, we'll see.