For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.  

Ecclesiastes 1:16-18; King James Version

“Nice,” said the skeleton, “I like a good biblical quotation frontispiece as much as the next dead guy.   Certainly there’s a more pretentious one you could select for this purpose:  the way of a fool is straight in his own eyes, but a prudent man harkens unto counsel, maybe.”  

Like a dog who returneth to his vomit, so is the fool who repeateth his folly.  

“I know you are, but what am I?” said the skeleton.  “Look, Elie, these are all well and good, if largely meaningless.  What was folly, to those comparing it to a dog eating his own vomit?   It was taking the Lord’s name in vain,  wearing improperly woven cloth, laboring on the sabbath, six hundred other things only an impious fool would do.  Many of them punishable by death under our merciful God’s own law.”

“‘Six days shall you labor and then, as I did, you shall rest on the seventh.  Don’t rest– you will be put to death.’    That’s why when you asked me if I wanted you to say kaddish for me after I died, I really didn’t give a shit.  Religion was a remnant of my dark, impoverished, abusive childhood.   I was forced to go pray by a woman who whipped me in the face every day, a very religious little woman she was, too.   I was about to finally be free of giving a shit about religion and everything else.  I could hardly muster a grunt, in answer to your question about saying kaddish, if you recall.”  

I do recall, it was mostly a shrug.  Sekhnet and I said kaddish for you for thirty days after you died.

“I know, and I was touched, even though I used to get a little dry chuckle, the only kind you get here with a mouthful of dirt, to see you praying without a yarmulke.  That was a nice touch, saying the old Aramaic prayer for the dead, without a minyan, without so much as a napkin for a skull cap.”  

I thought about that sometimes, but then, I realized you didn’t give a shit either.  

“People are funny, as Art Linkletter used to say, before his daughter stepped out of a high story window after taking some acid.   I guess he didn’t find people as funny after that,” said the skeleton.  “But, since you start with that somber quote from Ecclesiastes, what now, Elie?”  

I have been looking for insight here, something to illuminate and reclaim your life.   I haven’t quite found the organizing principle yet, but it has not been a fruitless search, not at all.  I’ve been surprised and encouraged by much of what I’ve learned.  

“You have to learn to teach yourself, the hardest trick in the world, particularly since the way of a fool is always straight in his own eyes and all that,” said the skeleton.  

We all stand on the shoulders of those who come before us.  You gave me a method, in your inimitable, often regrettable, way, by which to begin to learn to teach myself.   I eventually started to learn what I needed to know when I was a kid and had nobody to guide me.  

“You never came to me for advice,” said the skeleton.  

Can you blame me for that?  

“No,” said the skeleton, “I can’t blame you for that at all.  I was the last person who could give you any advice.”  

The most crucial advice I needed was what to do when you are being raised by an implacable adversary.  

“I know, and the implacable adversary was hardly the one to advise you on that particular concern,” said the skeleton.  “We have been over all this many times, and you have written about it here several times.   The ms. is now over a thousand pages, I would think, and it is time.  Time to cut some prime slices of it out and send it off, to get to the next stage of completing the book of my life.”

Agreed.