"I don't want to live to be 90" ... "Today is a good day to die"

I called up an old high school friend.  Unlike me, he is a busy guy.  For that matter, practically everybody on the planet is way busier than I ever am.

After two attempts over the last month, I got him this time.  The third time is the charm rule, I guess.  "I am so sorry, boss" he apologized when I told him about the previous attempts.

His usage of "boss" reminded me of those wonderful, but angst-ridden, teenage years.  We talked about "back in the day" and laughed.  The advantage of the memories we share with friends and family is that we can laugh, or cry, over events and people that we both know about.  The lack of shared memories and, therefore, the need to create new ones, is also what makes forging new relationships extremely difficult as we age.

As we chatted, I inquired about his parents.  "Other than some minor health issues, they are doing well" he replied.  And he continued, "the reality is that we are at an age when any moment anything can happen to our parents and our worlds will turn upside down.  We have to be thankful that things are going well."

Indeed. This past year alone, fathers of a few school-mates, and quite a few deaths in the extended family as well.  They all lived long lives, their ages ranging from 80 to 102.  When death removes from our world the parents of our classmates, our parents have fewer and fewer numbers in their cohort and the mortality of parents becomes more and more evident.  By that same logic, our own mortality becomes far too real.

Of course, it is not merely my friend and I thanking the stars for a "normal day" and dreading that phone call that will, as he put it, turn our worlds upside down.  And when that moment comes, it will be one tough decision after another to make:

A generation of middle-aged sons and daughters are facing this dilemma, in an era when advanced medical technologies hold out the illusion that death can be perfectly controlled and timed.

The other day, I perhaps shocked a friend when I said I want to be over and done at 75.  I have experienced a good life, have seen quite a bit of this world, and have met a mix of good and bad people.  A quarter century more seems a luxury at this point.  And when that end comes, I look forward to a good death, without machines and tubes and chemicals to keep me "alive."  I,  therefore, all the more relate to this:

Why don't we die the way we say we want to die? In part because we say we want good deaths but act as if we won't die at all. In part because advanced lifesaving technologies have erased the once-bright line between saving a life and prolonging a dying. In part because saying "Just shoot me" is not a plan. Above all, we've forgotten what our ancestors knew: that preparing for a "good death" is not a quickie process to save for the panicked ambulance ride to the emergency room. The decisions we make and refuse to make long before we die help determine our pathway to the final reckoning. In the movie "Little Big Man," the Indian chief Old Lodge Skins says, as he goes into battle, "Today is a good day to die." 

Why, yes, even today would be a good day for me to die.  I walked by the river on a gorgeous sunny afternoon. As I neared my front door, my neighbor offered me a chocolate cupcake.

I made myself "puli aval" (புளி அவல்) that I had been drooling for a while.  My first ever attempt, in all these years, to make it.  It tasted nowhere near what my brain remembers from my years of eating the version that mother made.  But, hey, I tried.  What is life if we did not try! I enjoyed eating that crappy version I made, while sitting on the patio and listening to the sounds of life all around me.

I traded emails with a couple of friends who are always keen about my welfare. I talked at length with my parents.

"Today is a good day to die."

In our modern world, we casually toss around the phrase "you only live once," and justify stupid drunken behaviors with a hashtag YOLO and follow it with LOL.  That is far from what life and death are about.  We have forgotten how to respect and appreciate death and, thereby, how to respect and appreciate life itself.  

 From the plagues of the Black Death through the 19th century's epidemics of typhoid, childbed fever and tuberculosis, they helplessly watched people die, from youth to old age. By necessity, they learned how to sit at a deathbed and how to die.

Ask yourself whether you will be ok with the grim reaper knocking on your door tonight.  If "today is a good day to die."   If not, then the logical follow-up question is what exactly do you want to get done before that moment arrives, right?