S'ghouls In Session

From Burton Hendrickson:

College president and pool boy aficionado Jerry Falwell Jr. has ordered all Liberty University students to return to school -- so businesses in Lynchburg are back open and ready for business:

* Perish & Begone Memorials is offering deals "you'll die for" with their Back-to-School specials.
* The Coffin Warehouse is offering "deep discounts" for coffins and caskets.
* "Plot Your Afterlife" at Resurrection Cemetery.  They, too, have a back-to-school sale going on.
* Dead, Death, and Beyond is offering ten to thirty percent off coffins, caskets, burial cases, robes and shrouds.

Historians and scholars all agree that Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) was quite a visionary.  Certainly, at times, third cousin Emily possessed that same quality.  Her poem "For Death -- or rather" seems to have captured rather concisely the essence of Mr. Falwell's decision to call back the students of Liberty University -- where "This" in the third line of her poem refers to his pronouncement because his ruling might very well have put away life's opportunity for his students.

What will death buy for the five-thousand-plus Liberty Eagles flying back to Lynchburg?  Quite a bit now that the businesses above are offering bargain rates and back-to-school specials on coffins, caskets, burial cases, robes, shrouds, cemetery plots, and more.

By Emily Dickinson:

For Death – or rather
For the Things 'twould buy –
This – put away
Life's Opportunity –

The Things that Death will buy
Are Room –
Escape from Circumstances –
And a Name –

With Gifts of Life
How Death's Gifts may compare –
We know not –
For the Rates – lie Here –