A Proper Arrangement

Sometimes it takes a grim reminder from Death before a person can get back to valuing life. That bony, black-robed hand hits you like a seismic wake-up call. In a chilling voice, he warns, "Stop treating life like it’s a business. This stubborn world isn’t a stock option, and if you think it is, then your returns are going to be disappointingly low."

In a world where death is a 30-second report on the local news or an “RIP” shout-out on somebody’s Facebook status, it can be hard to see the relevancy of this matter. The subject of death occupies an odd place in our collective mind—it maintains its status as a taboo, yet along with birth it is one of two events each and every one of us are guaranteed to experience. People everywhere imagine their future marriages and the birth of their children, and are constantly playing out these idealistic, romanticized scenes in their heads. Rarely, though, does a person take the time to think about the most significant moment of their life, their own death. It’s just too depressing for most people.

As a society, we assign so much fear to the dying experience that when the big day comes, our final moments are sure to be terrifying. Is that how you want to go out?

I don’t. I don’t want a crowd of people standing around my death bed, weeping and mourning while I’m trying to do my thing in peace. No, I myself have thought about how I would want my dying moment to be.

First of all, no hospital, no hospice. I don’t want to die in a graveyard of blocky, grey architecture, where some nurse is shouting my weakening vital signs to a doctor who is impatiently waiting to record my time of death so that he can take a ten and finish the five dollar foot long he has stashed in the break room. I want to go out somewhere far away from all that noise.

I want to be offed on the summit of a mountain, and I want to know about it in advance. That way, I can prepare for it. At the exact moment that it happens, I want to have my hands raised in a big V, the sun setting behind me on the horizon, and I want a photographer crouched and ready to capture the image in high contrast black and white, for use on an inspirational office poster.

I was thinking, maybe I could have a burlap sack nearby, loosely tied and filled with white doves, so that when my body goes limp, they can all be simultaneously released. Any proper funeral arrangement must contain a great deal of premeditated symbolism.

Music wise, I’m considering bagpipes. That, or I’d like to hire a big, black gospel organist like Melvin Seals (who Jerry Garcia nicknamed "the Master of the Universe") to play a musical score that accompanies my death. It would be timed perfectly so that when I take my last breath, he sweeps his hands across the keyboard and pounds out an especially triumphant sequence of notes.

In addition, I was thinking I could wire up a mechanism so that when I die, it triggers the explosive demolition of every major credit card company, like in Fight Club. That would be about as rewarding as any dying moment could be. Right now, alarms are sounding in the office of the FBI agent whose unfortunate assignment it is to monitor this blog. Sorry bud, but this is probably all just wishful thinking.

According to the CIA World Fact Book, odds are that I won’t be dying for another 58 years or so. Of course, you can’t always expect things to work out according to a national average. That’s just not the sort of thing you can count on.

Its true, nothing gets me more down in the moment than when somebody my age passes away. But then I get to thinking, most people spend those extra years afforded to their lives accumulating things that only serve to trouble them more when the time finally comes. Maybe it isn’t so bad to die with a cleaner slate.

I don’t have a death wish. I’m perfectly happy here, in the company of all you very fortunate people who still have air passing in and out of your lungs. But can we please start living our lives right, so that when we hear that someone close to us has died, it doesn’t send ripples of panic and sorrow throughout the community? Maybe if we weren’t so damn busy fearing our own impending doom, we would have a cause to celebrate.

When I die, if the plans I have outlined above don’t go through (and they most certainly won't), check my coffin. If I don’t have a big, shit-eating grin on my face, will somebody please put one there, for everyone’s sake?