My earliest memory is of my grandfather’s body lying in the middle of the street, his neck and legs flattened by the tires of a reckless driver, his blood saturated into the asphalt. With cane in hand, he’d gone for a walk to get some groceries and, on his way back, was struck by a woman not paying attention to the road in front of her. I continued to walk down San Joaquin Street in Stockton to get to school every morning. His blood had stained the gravel road and even after it faded, I couldn’t shake the image of his body lying there, helpless. The year was 1989. I was 5 years old.

Later that year, as my aunt was walking me to my kindergarten class at Cleveland Elementary School, Patrick Purdy, a deranged gunman, was opening fire on innocent children, killing five and wounding 29 others on the playground where my brothers, cousins, friends, and I played. He did this in less than two minutes with an AK-47 assault rifle before running behind the portable classrooms at the back of the campus to shoot himself in the head with his 9mm handgun. No one ever determined his motive. I highly doubt this was fate predetermined by any god. This shit just happens.

Because I’ve been acquainted with death since an early age, I’ve become cynical about the subject. It’s not that serious, really. When you masturbate you’re technically killing unborn children. People die, get over it.

You should have heard the silence when I told my editors that we were going to do an issue dedicated to death. I know the subject isn’t openly embraced outside of October. Even then it’s, “let’s play dress-up and act like sluts in the Castro!” So before you put that razor to your wrist, trust that this issue is not depressing. This issue examines death from different angles ranging from how people cope with loss to the theme of death in rock music in our tongue-in-cheek style you love (or hate).

With the recent natural disasters around the world – hurricane Katrina, the tsunami, earthquakes in South Asia – I’m starting to think the end-of-the-world-Armageddon-preaching yahoos on Market Street might be on to something. Maybe the end is near? And if it is, let’s not run from it. Instead, turn the page.