missing it all

Sometimes I play a little game. I pretend that I'm already dead and looking back on my life and wonder what I'll miss. I come up with the usual, of course:
beautiful spring days
the smell of coffee brewing in the morning
the sound of my husband and daughter talking and laughing in another room
holding a trusting purring cat
most music
et cetera

But then I think, if I were dead long enough, I'd eventually begin to miss even the annoyances of life. For instance, I just stepped outside on this very beautiful day, a day that bodes well for spring's eventual arrival, even with the calendar still declaring January and the weather station warning of temp's brief dip into the freeze-zone in a few hours. But ah, yes, the warmer weather has rooted my neighbors out of their burrows in full force, and they are seizing the opportunity to get a fix on: their pathological obsession with yard work. The air was abuzz and athrob with hammering, lawn mowing, leaf blowing, chain sawing.

But then I imagine, if I were dead, how I might even miss these sounds of life and other annoyances. Let's imagine I've been dead for a while but am given another chance to be alive for a while. Okay, it probably hasn't happened yet, but stay with me. I'll guess that upon my return from the dead that even the people who stop to chat in the middle of the grocery aisle might be infused with a certain beauty. They won't bother me! No way! Because I am ALIVE!

Well, it's a little appreciation exercise.

I think what I might miss most are the questions, the uncertainty and maybe even our stupid frailty.