Death becomes me

Be warned, this post is about a sensitive topic.

Pardon me for asking, but have you thought of your own death?

I recently did this when at one point during my trip home from the office, I realized that I was driving as if I graduated from a truck driving school (not to mention that, at work, I was flooded with articles on palliative care). I wondered if I would die on the road. Crazy huh? [Besides, if you know me, you would say it would be very, very likely. Ha! Ha!]

I know most of us would avoid this topic because we fear death, I mean who doesn’t? We don’t even want to think about it, let alone talk about it. But mordsith and I do talk about it from time to time. We have been surrounded with people who were stricken with cancer…making death very real.

Our conversations sometimes evolve around the death of a loved one:

If you loved one who is alive because of a machine, who is in terrible pain, asks, or even begs, you to unplug the machine, would you?

If a loved one with a terminal disease does not want to be medicated, would you allow it?

If you knew a loved one would die soon, would you give up years of your life so that he/she can live longer?

But most of the time, we would talk about our own deaths…

Given the chance, would you like to know when you will die?

If you had the choice, would you die of a long-term disease or a quick accident?

Given the chance, would you choose to not die at all (read: to be immortal)?

Whenever we are brave enough to venture into these conversations, we start serious…then we go to the lighter side of death, if there is such a thing, that in the end, we are laughing about it, which is a great idea since we don’t want to be dragged down to depression thinking about it. But I guess that as long as we don’t forget to breathe, we’ll be fine.