6 Months to Live

"If you were told you had six months to live, what would you do?"    

"Wait, in six months I suddenly drop dead, or do I have cancer, of what?  Am I sick?"

Professor Welkowitz rolls his eyes, explains the parameters.  Six months feeling healthy, one week in hospice, then ker-plunk.  Dead as a doornail.  

Everybody is talking about what they would do:  Rob a bank, try heroin, travel. 

"I'd probably be really depressed," I say.     

This scenario, you just can't imagine it.  Especially because nobody just drops dead from a symptomless disease.  That only happens in shitty movies.  In those movies, people do all the cliche things you'd expect them to.  They travel, because travel is associated with wisdom, and everybody wants to have a revelation before they die.  This person, they contact their son or daughter, the one they haven't spoken to in years.  It's a wrap-up.  An ending, so life can better resemble a storybook.  

In class, people are laughing and talking about this and that thing they always wanted to do.  They aren't thinking about what they would do with six months to live.  They're thinking about what they would do if there weren't any consequences.