Afterword

Abstract

This afterword reflects on how the author spent his father's birthday looking out the window of a cabin on the edge of the Ventana Wilderness in rural Monterey County, California. By comparison with the author's native Midwest, the obituaries run in the local newspaper, the Pine Cone, are long and almost incorrigibly joyful, crafted by survivors chock-full of joie de vivre. The author then talks about how a growing number of observers wrongly regard life in Middle America as a self-inflicted health hazard or risk factor, a dangerous lifestyle choice accompanied by grave consequences. While the rest of the nation sometimes begrudges the heartland their abiding necromancy and fussy cult-of-the-dead, it is worth considering the many ways in which a culture that speaks to, and with, its deceased is a culture more timeless, by definition, than that enjoyed by good-timers and death-deniers living elsewhere. These days, Midwestern Fatalism is part catchphrase, part internet meme, and part regional stereotype. Ultimately, the author maintains that to love life is first to know and to respect death.