Hit by a train
Slipped on the ice
Struck by lightning
Skied into a tree
Overdose
Suicide by hanging
AIDS
Drowning
Car wreck
Cancer
Hit by a car while riding a bike
Pulmonary embolism
Biked off a cliff
Skied into a crevasse
Fell while hiking
Heart attack
Plane crash
Murder
Sky diving
Hit by a tree limb
Suicide by gun
Smoke inhalation from a fire
Alcoholism
Those are the ones I can remember right now. There have been so many more.
You name it and I know of someone who died that way. It started when I was young, when a dad who lived down the street put himself between his son and a train and died. The family was on their summer vacation.
A couple of dads back then committed suicide. One hung himself, the other shot himself.
A friend of mine hung himself shortly after we graduated from college. Another ate a bunch of pills and killed herself. Another went into the woods and shot himself.
Lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, mysterious cancer, all of the cancers.
A college friend got hit by a truck while riding his bike to work one morning. Two years later his wife died of cancer, leaving their six kids behind.
A young talented man I knew saved the others in the house fire but died of smoke inhalation a few days later. A beloved local gent was driving to a job site one day when a tree limb fell on his truck and killed him. Another friend was driving to see his girlfriend when a truck in the opposite lane lost control and landed on top of his car, killing him instantly. You could slice the irony like a pie: he had just spent two weeks teaching winter driving skills. One friend had two sons who died of overdoses, then she died of cancer. My grandfather died of alcoholism, a friend did that, too.
Another friend died of lung cancer. While she was in the hospital in an experimental drug program her brother was killed in a helicopter crash.
I know. It’s a lot. But so is life.
You don’t know when or where or how, probably.
But you do know that.
You are going to die.
Maybe tomorrow, maybe not.
Maybe next Tuesday. Maybe in fifty years.
You don’t know.
So.
Be nice. Be helpful. Enjoy your life.
Be generous. Do better. Call your mom. Or your dad.
Life. It is, after all, for living.
You might want to clear your browser history before you leave the house.
You really just don’t know.
This is powerful and rings so true.
Walking with people on their journeys while dying, in grief after death and loss, and when planning their end of life is what I do. Sharing your experiences let’s others open their own minds, and maybe look at the litany of the deaths they have known. It makes for a bigger picture.
And yes on the clearing the history thing. True that!!!
Not knowing is the very reason, I choose to live simply in today. I want to celebrate now and be grateful that I can still walk at 78 years old, take a bus downtown, garden, take small hikes, smell the flowers and pick fresh vegetables from my garden. Live, Live, Live as Auntie Mame would say, that is all we have. Don't waste it.