As you may have guessed, I come from a strange, if not an odd lot, stock. The members of my family were mostly asthmatics, meat eaters, blatherers, triads, seafarers, nailbiters and the occasional seaport liquid substance abuser. But we’ve always been happy and long lived.

The thing that used to keep me alive was the hope of dying young. During high school, I never thought I’d make it past 30. Goddamn parental DNA and daily multivitamins (thanks, Mom) dragged me to this state of grey-haired decrepitude. But since there was always the certitude of death like taxes, I remained hopeful. Not so much now — after more than four months awaiting IRS action on a simple, short form, tax refund. I will freely admit it was for way less than the bogus refund submission my friends sent those fellows when we were 15 that claimed they owed us a million dollars. Who didn’t want to hold a check made out to them for one million smackers back then?

Many times, I have gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed into me. I suspect that like me, it didn’t like what it saw. Same goes for me when it comes to the IRS and its “Where’s My Damn Refund” website and telephonic presences.

To be Marlow at this late stage is no bed of roses. I’m the bride at every funeral. I’m the stiff in the wooden box at every wedding. Each time I look into the mirror I burst into tears. Yeah, sure — I burst into tears. Not really, mostly smirky laughter seeps out of me at having outlasted so many others of the more deserving. But then there’s the freaking IRS.

I’m in perpetual pain. I have arthritis, you know and, uh, I don’t want to really go into it. People are not interested in my woes. They say old people talk about nothing but what ails them, you know. Shan’t continue to do that anymore. But I shall not cease berating the weasels at the IRS.

If you said to me, “Marlow, we’ll pay you $20,000 to run a 10K.” I might be able to do it and afterwards, simply drop dead. The alternative is to lie safely in my bed and not run. So, asking me dangerous questions could provoke fatal responses. Asking the IRS simple refund status questions digitally and over the phone gets you nothing other than “check with your tax preparer” induced agita. Yo, IRS dumbasses, our tax return specifically said it was self-prepared.

So, after four months of waiting and fruitless requests for a status, I sent them another signed return last month.

Now I will admit that I’m a controversial figure, people either hate me or despise me. I always hoped for the latter. With the IRS, I’d prefer that they feared me. Yeah, I know, rotsa ruck with that. Yet, given the IRS’s infinite wisdom and divine efficiency, we’ll likely now get two, not one, refund checks tout de suite.

Now that I got that off my chest . . . we oldsters are creatures of twilight and delusion drifting towards our unseen ends during these times of disease, street unrest and various cultural purges and cancellations as we ponder:

• Why does the happiness in others rub some up the wrong way?
• Mother Nature can be terribly nasty when she puts her mind to it.
• Finally seeing that we’re not really what you could call a dreamboat, or even a tugboat.
• We old timers are nobodies in a century of digital somebodies.
• We spend most of our days fishing in waterless rivers for fish that do not exist.
• We are born, we suffer, and we die. Why must we watch television to distract ourselves from our destiny?
• All doctors are quacks to the patient. Only the Navy and Coast Guard are honest, the Captain goes down with his ship! Have you ever heard of a Doctor jumping into his patient’s open grave?
• I wanted to be a Good Man doing Wrong, but here I am — an Old Man doing Nothing.
• During this time of plague, in the bad nursing homes you die, while in the good ones they kill you based on orders from the governor. My nursing home bound, virus-infected, 95-year-old Aunt thanks you, Andrew Cuomo.
• If we old mad dogs bark at the moon, it doesn’t affect the moon at all, it just makes us dogs look like jackasses.

At least, I am in the prime of my senility. It is a recent and growing wish of mine that immediately after my death, the top of my head be lopped off, and that a spray of white and green asparagus be placed therein. It’d be the artist in me finally coming out. This would also greatly please my dear old departed mother who was always foisting under cooked veggies on me.

We ageing putzers spend a lot of time pondering the great questions of life — like what do we know about the beyond? Do we know what’s behind the beyond? I’m afraid most of us hardly know what’s beyond the behind.

In closing, all the great spiritual leaders are gone — Moses, dead; Jesus, dead; Muhammed, dead; Buddha, dead. I’m not feeling so hot myself while I continue wondering if death or this year’s tax refund will come first. How about you?

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