On his death bed the famed puritan preacher Cotton Mather said his last words, “Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all I feared, when I prayed against a hard death? O! I can bear this! I can bear it! I can bear it!” As his wife wiped his eyes, he concluded, “I am going where all tears will be wiped from my eyes.”
In the pasts three years I died three times.
Each time no heaven no hell only nothing.
Each time I was reincarnated to this life.
Neither Heaven nor Hell.
A Drinking Man – Foto by Shannon Greer 2020
My first beer was at age five. My granduncle in law, the head of Boston’s Homicide squad gave it to me. Marshfield MA. A sip. Bleech. My last drink was on July 30, 2021. At Biddy’s Bar. A gin tonic. A double. Half the ice. Twice the alcohol. The next morning I woke near-death. The ER staff rushed me into into the OR. I escaped like Lazarus. Back to life.
I figured the numbers.
Of drinks throughout my life.
From 1958 t0 2021.
They came to less than a 100,000 beers, glasses of wine, shots, gin-tonics et al.
Rarely ad nauseum.
The staff of the 169 bar are thinking about putting up a plaque outside Biddy’s Bar.
Of course without their permission.
A Drinking Life
1957-2021
PNS