meet me in the air

 

I was thinking about how some people continue working until they die.  And other people retire from the work they have been doing, and proceed to do other things - things that they have presumably been looking forward to having time for.

After one of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell's recent episodes, comments included:

~  Why do they wanna die in Congress?

~  He should have been fishing the past 20 years.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis was working in New York City as a book editor when she was diagnosed with cancer.  One of "her" authors said he wasn't aware she was sick, he received a fax from her with notes about his manuscript and then several weeks later he heard she had died--he was like, "What?!"

She would not have needed to keep working for financial reasons -- she continued because she liked doing it, and wanted to help bring out the book.

        Actress Nancy Marchand portrayed Tony Soprano's mother in the first two Sopranos seasons, 1999 and 2000, and then passed on in the year 2000.

        In a Season 3 episode, the character Bobby Baccalieri Sr. is very sick and aware that he is approaching his own death when Tony assigns him to carry out a hit.

        Several other characters anxiously question Tony's decision - 'he's an old man, why are you makin' him do this?'  But Mr. Baccalieri wants to do the job.  He says "it will be good to feel useful again, for a change."

        One character asks him, "What if things don't go your way?"

        "If they don't - they don't," is his stoic answer.

It's unbelievable, but yet believable at the same time - watching him suffering with a persistent cough, shortness of breath, carrying an inhaler with him....and he goes to the home of the man he is supposed to kill - a modest 1960s-type house - with steps, a small front porch, the outer storm door.

        He is a 71-year-old man, wearing regular daytime New Jersey mobster-crew clothes.  "Packing" two items - a revolver, and the inhaler.

After the murder we see him driving away, through busy traffic, blood on his face from the struggle.  Police cars with sirens wailing pass by him going the opposite direction, probably to the scene of the crime he just committed.

        He coughs and coughs, has trouble breathing, takes out his inhaler, drops it, curses, tries to fish the inhaler up off the floor of the car, while driving....

He is suffering, and at the same time he feels exhilarated.  The car radio starts pouring out the song "Sister Golden Hair" all over the jubilant, bloody, ill "wise guy."

        In an EXTERIOR shot, we see the car take a half-a-U-turn across lanes of traffic. ...

Unbelievable.

And seems very real.

♪ ♫♫

...Will you meet me in the middle?

Will you meet me in the air?...

-30-