Dying in
Retrospect
by Michael S.
Collins
We will all
die someday. Very cheery thought I know. It’s
like you sit watching time go by and things
happen just out of the corner of your proper
vision, and you don’t really pay attention
to it? You know how you check up the news pages
and it will say "25 die in Submerged Boat"
and you never take it in. That’s a whole
twenty-five people gone, and yet it’s such a
mindblowingly massive thing, that we can not
properly take it and so it moves from our mind.
People dead....but we never knew them, so it will
pass. Someone somewhere does not have that
benefit.
Which is why
it comes as such a shock to our system when
someone we know dies. There not suppose to do
that! How dare they shatter our views of
invincibility! And I suppose it is alright if
it’s like a 90 year old grandmother, or
Joseph Furst who was 94 and had a good life, but
what of the prematurely dead? What about Douglas
Adams, Curt Hennig, Ross McWhirter and many
countless more? Death came, took, and we lie in
their wake. We don’t like it, because it
reminds us of its inevitability. It will come,
when we least expect it, and we have no chance to
do anything to prevent its eventuality.
I've always
taken it for granted that I probably won’t
live to see a pension. A lousy attitude on
personal safety coupled with an almost amazing
addiction to vices (Jack Daniels, vodka, and
donuts) and weak health is no doubt an
exceptionally unhealthy combination. So, if we
take it as read that premature death should be,
as dad forever warns, expected. Well, who wants
to live forever anyway? The show must go on. (And
enough of this Queen throwbacks stuff). It’s
not the length of the life involved, it’s
the length of the experience involved in the life.
And so what do
we learn from all this? Well, I'm now twenty and
therefore ancient. I ask you this: How many
people have I made a positive life-changing
impact on? I can't honestly think of any. If, god
forbid, my lungs gave up tomorrow and I ceased
this mortal coil, how many god honest people
would be effected for more than the "Oh yeah,
him" recognition. Just an acknowledgement of
the name, a shrug of the shoulders and a pass on
to other news items. Yes, I fear being forgotten,
but that’s par for the course: the idea that
really nothing would change that much if it
happened. I have no interest in dying for the now;
I have FAR too much work to do. Books to publish,
countries to save, you know the stuff. But to
what end?
But you know,
Martin: that was no excuse to push the damn
button, you idiot! I tell you, see if we ever
survive Armageddon, I’m going to kill you!
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