Ozzymandias
(WAIT for the director’s cue. LOOK straight into the camera.)
Thank you! I can barely contain the spirit welling up inside me here tonight. It is my joy and honor to present our Lifetime Achievement Award to a misunderstood creative giant in Contemporary Christian Music.
After more than a decade as the debauched leader of an openly Satanic heavy metal band, he was cast out under the public explanation that he had somehow become too debauched to continue on with an openly Satanic heavy metal band.
Now, bear with me here, I know this isn’t the Satanic Music Awards.
(PAUSE for laughter.)
Our honoree hunkered down in a dirty Los Angeles hotel room in the filthy early 1980s, and emerged from that crucible with a shining new calling to the Lord. The soaring and searing music that he wrote with his new group was overlooked by our industry at the time, having had the misfortune of being released on a major secular record label. But now, his concept album about a man on the cusp of armageddon, made to remain on Earth following the Rapture of the Lord’s faithful, is considered part of the canon as one of the 20th century’s greatest works of Christian Rock.
Praise the Lord!
(PAUSE for applause.)
It starts with a beautiful, simple statement of humility as the fellow Unraptured grasp at straws for truth, and turn to those around them for some explanation about what has transpired. After a lifetime of listening to the same lies and fools, false prophets one and all, he tells those gathered around him to begone, having realized that he is not the master of their destiny – or his own. Who am I, he asks, other than one of the many suffering souls who have been left behind? He admits the only hope availed to any of them is to believe. In miracles. What a beautiful portrait of grace as the still, small voice is already speaking to him amid the hellscape! And that’s just the first song.
(PAUSE for laughter.)
With his new reality setting in on Track 2, he feels himself gripping the rails in the throes of madness as the armies of millions amass for Armageddon’s final clash, and he realizes nothing can be done for a world that refuses to remember how to love and forget how to hate. Without the support structure of a caring mental health system or God’s healing grace, his emotional pain rises unabated. Not even television is the opiate it once was, for there lives the antichrist, priming the pump of evil. He comes to the chilling conclusion that everything has gone unstoppably awry. And at that lowest point, the voice comes to him again, so timeless and poignant: You’ve got to listen to my Word.
Listen. To. My. Word.
(PAUSE for applause.)
By the third song, he has moved through all the stages of grief into a sort of acceptance. He still hopes for the sun, but he knows the rain is here to stay. As the world revels in its orgy of death and destruction, he sequesters himself in loneliness as perhaps the only person on Earth to feel the shame of a past that put him in this cast-out state. The world is devoid of friendship, let alone love. As he rejects that old life and the storms of his mind begin to clear, he understands that this existence is transitory, that abundance lies ahead, that he’ll rejoin his loved ones in the end. And the end, for sure, is near.
With new purpose, he sets out as a sort of end-times evangelist. He rails against those who are engaging in the slow suicide of liquor, in drowned sorrows that are washing away any hope of a tomorrow in the presence of the Lord. He strips away the lies of their lives, telling them how they’re living in hell right on Earth, and he fervently attempts to bring them to reality. How could they not know what it’s all about? Well, we all know, don’t we?
(PAUSE for amens.)
Amen! Next, he takes down the followers of that foul Satanist, Aleister Crowley, who is full of charm that should have set off every alarm – just like the dark Angel of Light himself – and reveals him to be the worst brand of charlatan, bamboozling the weak-minded with his fraudulent magic. And he offers his personal testimony of pornography addiction, how he engaged in the sin of masturbation while gorging himself with the poison passion of smut films. His struggle is so mighty that he begins to suspect he might be a victim of demonic possession! But in the end, in the end, he finds strength through the Lord to just say no. He shouts it a total of 35 times over the course of the song. No, No, No! Count them!
(PAUSE for laughter.)
But then (PAUSE for effect) the darkness (PAUSE again) descends. Still, he turns deeply to the Lord’s Word, the Holy Bible, and when he reads the final book, the Book of Revelation, it’s as if he’s reading the day’s headlines. The seas turn red. The sun falls. The world burns. He slips a bit into Gaiaism with the whole Mother Earth thing, but we can forgive that as he puts it in the context of the last words of Jesus: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Finally, he is released from his worldly bondage as the Lord comes like a thief in the night to steal him away to the true and free paradise. The chains are loosed as his old rebel nature reverses, spurring him to finally rebuke Satan and accept the Lord. And the Lord’s love flows down like wine.
(PAUSE for amens.)
Amen, brothers and sisters, amen. It is now my blessed privilege to present our highest honor to one of the boldest, bravest voices ever lifted to the Lord!
The album is “Blizzard of Ozz,” and the award for Lifetime Achievement goes to the late, great Ozzy Osbourne!
(PAUSE for long applause.)
The Osbourne family could not be with us tonight, because they are in Milan for the debut of their new high-end fashion line, “Prince of Darkness.”
What Happens When We Die
The nurse turns off our monitor so the vital signs alarm won’t scare everyone to death. Someone holds our hand. We feel held, and it matters.
After more than a billion beats, our heart stops.
We immediately shit the bed. No one but the nurse is expecting that.
For about 30 seconds, each part of our brain lights up in a frenzy of activity that we’ll never get to tell anyone about, then burn out one by one. The darkness drops over us like an ancient, heavy quilt.
Many of our cells continue to fight to stay alive. The stem cells especially don’t want to call it quits. Everything else becomes a last supper for the bacteria inside us. They don’t know their very universe is at an end.
A doctor comes by and puts a stethoscope on our chest. It doesn’t feel cold anymore.
The orderlies wrap us in the sheet from our hospital bed. It fits so well that it must have been designed to do just that.
We go straight to the crematorium. Just like in the movies, someone comes by and ties a toetag on us. Name of deceased | Age | Sex | Weight | Height | Place of Death | Date of Death | Cause of Death | Physician. The funeral director pulls away the sheet and holds a headshot against our face, just to make sure. Mix-ups happen.
They pick us up from both ends, count to three and shoot us into a body bag made from the same blue FEMA tarp material that goes over holes in the roof.
They wheel us to a wide elevator down to the basement and out through a garage-style door into a three-year-old Cadillac hearse just about ready to be traded in. We’re not the only body back there.
The ride is bumpy and the Dunkin’ drive-through line is long.
The mortician cleans us up and dresses us in our final change of clothes.
We have our last visit with our 30-years-divorced parents. They come. They go.
For the third time, someone makes sure we are who we were. They check off boxes for pacemakers and prostheses, silicone implants and radioactive cancer seeds. All of that comes out. Rings stay on.
We get tagged one more time and are no longer known by our name.
Now we are 34061.
They put us in a plywood box that looks like a prop coffin some Boy Scout made for one of those charity haunted houses where one of the dads plays Dracula.
The mortician punches “preheat” on the steel control box next to the oven. They slide us in like a five-foot loaf of bread and shut the door. The mortician punches the big red button. The temperature hits 1,800 degrees in an instant. It looks like the inside of an F-18 engine with the afterburner on.
We would’ve liked the new Top Gun.
For a glorious while, we exist simultaneously in all states of matter. We are the scientific trinity. Our liquids boil off into gas and rise up an exhaust pipe to the heavens. Our solids flex and pull our arms up into the “pugilistic pose” as they burn away.
Rocky was always our favorite.
They let the oven cool off all the way before they open the door again. We come out looking a lot like our oldest ancestor’s fossils arranged for a National Geographic centerfold in 1974.
The mortician uses a long-handled hoe to pull out the big bone chunks and a wire brush to coax the ashes onto the tray. A bit of us stays behind. Some of us mixes in with Morty (34062). Some with Suzanne (34063). Some with Joel (34064). All within tolerances, just like there’s a legal amount of bug parts that can be in your peanut butter.
A hand-held magnet pulls our fillings out of the pile for the recycling basket. We fall into what looks like a giant soup pot on top of a central AC unit. Inside the cremulator, we grind into fine ash and slide out into a thick plastic sack.
With us in there, the sack weighs just under eight pounds and would fit perfectly inside a leather bowling bag. But we end up inside a blue canvas tote bag that used to hold our toys and towels at the beach. It has a flying Superman on it. For the few days before the funeral, we sit on the shelf in the coat closet. We’re too hard to look at.
The funeral is at lunchtime. Nobody eats breakfast.
Our dad pulls the bag down with his good hand, the one that doesn’t shake with Parkinson’s. He puts us in the footwell of his Lincoln Navigator. The ride down to Astoria Park is bumpy. They ever gonna finish these roads?
We arrive at the corner tree we chose when we still could, with a view of the East River and the Hell Gate and the city we loved like the love we never found, all of it stretching end-to-end across our horizon. A ConEd hardhat team is jackhammering over the greetings and catch-ups and reminiscences of our cousins, our nieces, our nephews, our aunts, our uncles, our friends. Our family. Someone puts us next to our mom’s wheelchair. She can’t stop crying enough to say more than hello and thank you.
The ConEd foreman comes over and asks if this is a memorial service. Our dad points to the trunkwide bouquet of pink and orange and white roses tied around the tree with satin ribbon. The foreman tells his crew to take a long lunch.
Birdsong takes over again as the loudest sound in the park, until the minister begins. He gets our name wrong, and our dad’s name, and our mom’s name.
Our dad thanks everyone and tells them never to be too sad, because we enjoyed every minute with every person there. We danced in the rain for nine years when the doctors only gave us two. He spreads us around the tree in a ring and smooths us down with his bare hand like he’s tucking us into bed.
A red DeLorean honks at the crew to get out of the road. The horn plays “La Cucaracha.” The jackhammers start up again, hard and loud, right up until quitting time.
The birds drop down from the tree. A little of us gets on their beaks. We take flight over Queens, home to both of the city’s airports.
Squirrels rush across the grass to grab acorns. A little more of us gets between the pads of their toes. We climb the tree with them.
It gets windy. Some more of us blows onto the tires of the nearest parked cars along the sidewalk. We ride along to Jersey, to Florida, to the other side of the street and back again every time the sign says to move or it’s another $125 ticket.
The skies grow overcast. In a tender act of arbor vandalism, our oldest friend comes back under the cover of night to carve our initials into the tree trunk.
It begins to rain. The big drops pelt us and turn us to mud. We sag under the weight of the water and merge ever so slowly with the soil.
Day by day.
Month by month.
Year by year.
Decade by decade.
Century by century.
Millennium by millennium.
Age by age.
Epoch by epoch.
Period by period.
Era by era.
Eon by eon.
Until the sun inevitably consumes the Earth and we become the stardust that we always were.
Wayne Lockwood is a co-founder of Codorus Press and earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The longtime journalist realized the lies of fiction tell far more truth. He lives in Delaware and is at work on a novel, “Perfect Circles.”