Dear Death, I hope you cut your fucking foot off

So there is a man I know, not well but better than I would, due to the sorrow of some mutual friends. Friends whose grief rose higher this week as this man came closer to solving the hideous mystery which lurks close by a person's final breath. A person dying from the injuries of brain lesions, a rather dressed up name for Cancer, will often take on a characteristic breathing pattern called Chayne-Stokes where the comatose patient will start breathing in a ragged rhythm which builds to a crescendo and stops cold, long enough to cause a few tired eyes to raise and then it starts again. Why is it we think on the subject of death for most of our life yet at the end so few want to pass? Indeed there is no line jumping in that final waiting room and I in my role as a medical handy man have seen no end of persons rise from varying periods of clinical death and try for another few hours; sometimes weeks or even a year or so. I've laid the electric on a stone dead man at a square dance only to have him try and rejoin the line, just like a car with a slightly low battery, he just needed a little jump. I've laid the car analogy on plenty of docs down the years and everyone has gotten all snooty on the subject. All the more reason you should stay away from most doctors, I'd say. Nope, people are so happy staying alive, the body has to make up some solid gold 50 caliber machine gun diseases that will not only take you out but make you wish you were already gone. And that brings me back around to my sort of friend Ed the banjo guy. He had had cancer for four years or more and finally the disease just bashed him with a big hammer to the brain. So Ed's on the other side now and if there is anything there worthwhile he knows it and we don't.
And as far as spooky skeleton in the picture is concerned, if he were to lose a foot due to misstep with that big cradle scythe we all might gain some good time. I'm all for a good time and I meant that pun about the scythe too. Now get out of here before someone else gets killed. OK? Fine