for some reason looking at a tomb stone or a grave marker, does not seem as personal, or direct, or maybe stark as a death certificate, a literal start date and end date on a piece of paper with a fancy embossed seal, such a final formal non personal but about a person statement, a summary in two lines of an entire life, a simple one line map from here to there, point a to point b, period, it seems so… small, so miniscule, so- non human almost, it has been a couple years since my father passed, but just looking at photographs, or trinkets, or something on the TV that reminds me, nothing is as jarring as this is, this piece of paper, a start date… and a final date, no details to carve this life out as different from any other, just a range of years, numbers, on a paper, it seems so short in this form, an 84 year time frame – seems like nothing, almost like it never happened, so… undeniable, we have a start date, such a strange concept to fathom as all we know is THIS, this right now, this existence, this is our forever, our endowment from this universe of incomprehensible age, this now, so many days removed from our born on date whether that was yesterday or decades, inching ever closer or speeding towards the expiration date we truly have, maybe, like a product, if someone examines me close enough my expiration date is somewhere encoded on my person, if only we had the means to read that code, we are a creation, surely there might be a clue or glyph or a sign that points to the moment in time of our demise, or at least exit stage from this particular performance? for now, it does not feel real, that there is a definite date time stamp out there with my name on it… but there surely is, my expiration date. (and one day my paper will trace my life as a range of dates)