Being Dead is a Lot of Work

Note: Names, places, events, facts, and details in the following account may have been changed for purposes of humor, humour, or entertainment.

 
A couple of days ago, my wife, Mrs. Vocifero, received a letter in the mail. Now, her usual procedure when receiving a letter is to do one of the following:

1. Dispose of the letter without opening it,
2. Place the letter in a safe place to open later and then forget all about it, or
3. Leave the letter on the shelf by the front door until someone else disposes of it.

In this case, for some reason, Mrs. Vocifero opened the letter and read it.¹ Somewhat to her surprise, Mrs. Vocifero found that the County Board of Elections had removed her from the voter roll due to the unfortunate circumstance of her death. At this point, she brought the letter to me for consultation; further examination showed that, due to a recent act of Congress, some Federal Agency™ (or Administration™) had been informed by the Social Security Agency™ (or Administration™) that she was no longer alive, and had consequently notified the County Board of Elections—not that they care in the least.²

One might, of course, wonder why anyone would bother to write to a dead person. At any rate, one wouldn’t think that a letter delivered by the Postal Service™ would get into the hands of someone who was no longer among the living. In this case, however, and in spite of her unfortunate demise, the letter was successfully delivered to Mrs. Vocifero.

I found the news of my wife’s death fairly shocking, and I was expecting my wife to be at least a little concerned about her untimely death too. But, on the whole, she seemed to be too busy to bother about it. This was quite a surprise, since there is a long list of things that she is concerned about. I don’t have the whole list, but a very partial and preliminary list might include some of the following:

• Politics
• Religion
• World peace
• Pollution and environmental destruction
• The safety and reliability of our family automobiles
• The British royal family
• Jazz, especially from the mid-twentieth century
• Children’s books
• Eliminating clutter
• Not throwing anything away unnecessarily
• Modernist art prints
• Movies and movie actors

And, while being dead is not on the list of her concerns, I, at least, would have thought she would have been a little upset. But she was not.

If not get upset, what does one do after finding out that one has died? I suggested inviting all our friends and relatives over and breaking out the whisky (and maybe even the whiskey) for a wake, but she didn’t think that was a good idea. I also suggested that, given her status as no longer alive, she wouldn’t be liable to traffic tickets or criminal prosecution, but she didn’t follow up on that suggestion either.³ Instead she decided not to stay dead, and spent the next approximately 79 hours communicating via telephone and in person with a variety of Federal Agencies™ (or possibly Administrations™), other government entities, financial institutions, and members of the general public.⁴ As of today, Mrs. Vocifero has been provisionally recognized as having returned to life (due to a clerical error™) and is enjoying reasonably good health. She is considering sending a letter to Congress informing Congress that, due to a clerical error™, Congress has ceased to exist.⁵

Dewey Defeats Truman” by Byron Rollins. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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