Everything eventually, goes, dies, breaks, machines and living things alike! Translated…
“There’s not a ‘how-to’ manual on death and dying, nobody can tell you how to handle it, or how it will go for you”.~~~Lucia Berlin, “Doloreski Cemetery”.
Normally, it’d, looked like a certificate of award, with the floral borders, like a corral, enclaving in the paper, with the serious words, declaring the warranty period, with the legally-bounded statements, to assure that the consumers can return or exchange the imperfect products or to get it repaired free of charge. On the opposite end, it’s to make sure that once this period of warranty passed, the shop is no longer responsible. And of course, the warranty doesn’t mention how the product would only always, start malfunctioning right AFTER the warranty period was expired, and in the end, the item can only, become, trashed.
There’s that junk drawer in my house, with the screws, the wires, the unknown parts, with that stack of thick warranty.
this one, only for, TEN years!
As I’d received the items, these parts were, wrapped in that plastic bag with the user manuals, placed inside the cardboard box of the product we’d bought. Mostly, they were, household appliances. Opening the packages up, plug it in, and the appliances started, working right, and we’d, added the items, to the already growing means of our lives, and, that sense of, how interesting the way it’d worked, fazes off soon. As for the users’ manual, no need to describe them, long, with the advices of use, totally impersonal, unless we are forced to, we would, never read them. Besides, even after we read, we may not, understand what it’d said.
And because of this, the warranty and the users manuals became like two peas in a pod, only opened not long ago, and, stuffed, into that darkened drawer, being, forgotten. As the major cleaning time came, I’d often thought, I needed to, sort through these, to toss out the already-expired warranties.
This day, I’d finally, found the time, and started going through these packages page by page, like sorting through that thick volume of a history of household appliances: fridge, bought seven years ago when I’d moved; fan, already broken, disposed of already, but the warranty stayed; electric razor, bought when there was the discount on Father’s Day; the hairdryer, I’d used that, for a whole year already! How fast the time flies; the food processor, two years ago, as my child started on his solid foods, during the time, every weekend I’d had to, spent an entire afternoon in the kitchens, processing the foods for him, cooking the foods, then, shredded them all into mush; the blood pressure machine, five years ago, as my father, moved in with us, later my father went to the long-term care facilities to stay, and now, every weekend, we’d taken our two children along to visit him, last week, we brought a ball with us, my father’s losing his muscle tone by the day now, but to catch his one-year-old young grandson’s toss, he’d still, extended his hand, and, caught it; the computer, bought about six months ago, barely used, I really can’t find time to sit down, most of the items, I dealt with on my cell……………that tiny, thick stack of hard copies of the warranty, symbolized how the promises of perfection we’d made in our lives, from the materialism.
Being cowardly as I, I’d, always, carried that blindness of bliss, that guarantee of, comfort, and used it, to keep the pains, and failures, out of my own life.
And, if there’s, the warranty, then, it’d, specified the unavoidable end, of deterioration, damage, death, and parting.
Compared to the characters out of the stories of Lucia Berlin, always on the edges of diseases, drug addictions, poverty, alcohol poisoning, struggling through their, lives, my worries seemed, too, unimportant. And while, when one day, when everything crumbled, what use would there be, to ask help from, a single, piece of, paper?
what we all want to have, with everything in our, lives…
Or maybe, even though there are no user manuals on death, only death as its own, best, guarantee, stated, that good or bad, it’ll, all come to an end one day, and how, we all, own our own rights, to “log off” our own life one day.
And so, the warranties, are a metaphor of life, nothing lasts, forever, and that’s, a F-A-C-T, everything eventually, breaks down, and needs to get, replaced with the new, and, that, is how the world works, life is that way too.