A long time ago, when he was first teaching us how to laugh through our neuroses, Woody Allen wrote a play called "Death Knocks." Death turned out to be some klutz who stumbles into a bedroom, out of breath and thirsty and asking for a Fresca before he takes a fellow named Nat to the Great Beyond.
"You look a little like me," says Nat.
"Who should I look like?" says Death. "I'm your death."
"Give me some time," says Nat. "Another day."
"I can't."
"One more day. Twenty-four hours," says Nat.
"What do you need it for? The radio says rain tomorrow."
Some things stay the same: We still want to put off death until tomorrow and tomorrow. But change has arrived. Today, death doesn't knock. He telephones.
The calls come from cemeteries, asking if we want burial plots for some date to be determined later. The calls rattle us. Who wants to talk about death in the middle of a life? Who wants to consider the afterlife, when we're having such a swell time watching "Taxi" reruns and eating low-fat yogurt?
Nobody, if you want to know. We want to consider death a thing that happens only to other, less fortunate souls. We imagine a cure will be found for whatever it is that's scheduled to kill us, before it actually does.
"I know, I know," says an acquaintance of mine who runs a cemetery in Baltimore County. He's a nice man, a sensitive man, and I leave out his name and the name of his cemetery because I don't wish to blame him for the clumsiness of one of his employees.
"People don't want to think about death," he says, which is why he sometimes gets calls from those upset that his employees, working off a computerized list, have called to solicit burial arrangements.
"We know it's a problem," my acquaintance says, "but if we don't reach out, they won't be breaking down our door. We used to mail brochures. But some people found those offensive. This is a service business. Everybody uses a cemetery, and we have to generate income to keep it going. We can't wait for people to say, 'Gee, Margaret, it's a nice day, let's go look for a burial plot.' I'm not ashamed of what we do."
Until now, anyway.
Until a telephone solicitation was made to someone I happen to know, a woman in Baltimore County, married and the mother of two children. As irony would have it, the woman was entering St. Joseph Medical Center for major surgery the next morning.
"You've been selected to receive two burial plots," the caller from the cemetery said. "You get a living will. We come out, and if you have to be hooked up to a machine, you've told us whether you want to be kept alive or not. And your husband, if he wants to turn off the machine. . . ."
"Wait a minute," the woman said, wanting to get off the telephone but not wanting to embarrass the solicitor. "This is really not a good time to talk about a burial. I'm going in for surgery tomorrow."
Is the message clear enough -- In her time of trauma, leave this woman alone! -- for anyone with a gnat's brain?
Apparently not.
"Surgery?"
"Yes, and I'm scared to death about it. I'm 37 years old, and I don't want to talk about burial plots or
living wills. Can we do this some other time?"
"When?" said the solicitor, clueless.
"I don't know," said the woman. "I told you, I'm going in for surgery."
"What are you going in for?" the solicitor pressed on.
"A tumor in my neck."
"Oh," said the solicitor, blithely rushing on, "then can I call you on . . ."
"I don't know when you can call me. Could you wait a few weeks?"
"OK," said the solicitor, "but we also have something for children."
"Please. I don't want to talk about this any more."
Yesterday the woman, now recovered from surgery, said, "I know I should have hung up the phone, but I was embarrassed. You know, just drop it. Stop trying to sell me."
For what it's worth, the man who runs the cemetery agrees. He says his employee went "well beyond the pale. This is totally unacceptable."
Nobody wants intimations of death to arrive, at the door or on the telephone, surgery or not. Like Woody Allen, we want to put it off until some tomorrow to be determined later. But, if death happens to call, the least it can do is mind its manners.