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65 My New Insurance Plan My insurance company called me today—a great new plan that’s just right for me—thousands of dollars for me when I’m already dead and gone, in the grave, while I lie still, clasped in soil and water, beneath stones, and cold; my husband or my children or Uncle Sam will claim this benefit for me. But first, I have to die a certain way, in a certain month, let’s say, December or January, when snow piles up along street corners and sidewalks, when drivers can’t get to work in their own cars. When cars go sliding and crashing into walls. I must not die of AIDS or pneumonia or chest pains; heart attacks will not satisfy this great new plan. I have to crash on the expressway, into a wall, a school building, into a house; I must die instantly or they’ll never pay. I cannot be hooked up to machines or call in Jack Kervorkian; my insurance plan won’t cover such a procedure as Jack’s, and the police can’t arrive before I swallow my last breath. My bones, all of my bones must be broken, but my eyes must be in place. I cannot give up any body parts before I’m safely in the grave. The cost, the soft pleading lady convinces is only a hundred dollars a month, a bare hundred from my monthly paycheck, while I wait for my car to come sliding on ice, seat belt strapped tightly around me, buckled, of course; me, crashing into a welcoming wall. ...

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