Musings on Mortality ~ OR ~ We Are All On Our Way to Decay
I have a question for ya. What is your exit strategy? In other words, how do you plan to depart this big, blue marble? I’m not so concerned with what comes after the dying thing it’s just the way I have to get there that makes me anxious when I think about it—and unfortunately, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
I know, Debbie Doom.
But hey, none of us can escape it—we can neither buy our way out, bribe our way out, talk, bargain or cajole our way out of the inevitable.
Death is an equal opportunity sniper on a hill.
It’s just the way this game is played. So…knowing that, have you thought at all about your exit? I read about a man who did.
Thursday, a 104-year-old Australian man chose to die in Switzerland from assisted suicide. He was neither terminally ill (which is the condition required for most legal assisted suicide) nor was he mentally impaired.
He was just so fucking old that his quality of life had diminished significantly enough to cause him to make what we can all agree is a pretty drastic and permanent decision. Or is it?
Even his family was on board. As a matter of fact, he was accompanied by his grandson… to Switzerland, silly, not the great beyond!
Do you want to live so long that you outlive everyone you’ve ever known and loved? I for one, think that would suck.
The reason I’m asking is that my husband was in a motorcycle crash earlier this week and although he had to spend a couple of days in the hospital, he’s going to be fine. But it made me think about all the ways to die and how there is a part of me that every time he goes racing or off-roading waits for “the call”.
If you were to ask me on any given day over a beer and a taco, I would tell you that dying on his bike would be the way he’d want to go. But it would have to be quick. No severe injury that would force me to make the decisions no spouse ever wants to make. A friend of his in his eighties had a heart attack on his bike, so, maybe like that.
Right? Quick and nasty. Here one minute, gone the next. He would like that.
But when I got “the call” which was actually a text, “I had a bad fall, I’m in a lot of pain, they’re taking me to the hospital,” well, all of that flew out the window.
No, no, no, no, no! I bargained. You MAY NOT take him now! He’s too young to go, I’m too young to be a widow and besides that, we have tickets to a thing in June!
I’m here to report that I’m a fraud and a phony where the “just let him die fast” shit is concerned. Every molecule in my body was just so fucking happy he was still alive.
But what am I waiting for? When will it ever be okay?
Do you want to die of a disease? Yeah, me neither.
So what does that leave?
I know I don’t want to choke on salad. What a fucking waste of a last meal!
I know I don’t want to survive a zombie attack only to be forced to live in a post-apocalyptic society. Attention all Zombies: If you’re reading this—just take me in the first wave, I’ll be the one waving the white flag. (That’s a lie too. I know me. I’ll probably lead the resistance, storm the zombie perimeter with a fire gun and make it to the freezer where they keep the antidote).
I know I don’t want to die sitting in traffic on the 405 because ALREADY KNOW HOW THAT FEELS!
I’ve already said I don’t want to out-live every one I know but I also don’t want to die on a really good hair day doing something fun with my friends.
So…licked to death by puppies?
I may need to give this a little more thought…or not.
Carry on,
xox
