Great thread Dot, but I have to get this off my chest, by evoking Carl Spackler:
A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking.
So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga.
So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Sorry
Death is odd, in that we often see it as fair, as in the case of a 90 year-old dying in his sleep; and unfair, the good they die young.
We seem pleased with a long life, never mind that it is over.
I have, like most my age, a certain familiarity with mortality...among my close friends, I am the only one with a surviving parent, my Father. And we all have lost cherished Grandparents as well, in odd, happy and sad events.
Unlike many, I know the passing of young men and women, premature, the wick that would have burned bright now left below the collar, to remain cool to the touch.
What is now important to me, what has risen in my mind as the critical element of a life well led, is simple preparation for the inevitable. Let me explain.
My Dad has a living will, has prepared financially for a declining mind and a healthy heart, has
thought about death in a practical, rational manner...his overriding concern (since I am his Executor we talked about the preparations) is to never be a burden, to not allow his demise to alter the lives of those he loves beyond our love for him and the fact that, like my Mother, I will think of him in the best manner every day. Miss him.
So, death. The Big D.
Wills are for the young and old, as are funerals: Prepare now.
What a preachy a$$ I am.
My wake will be a riot of lies and truths, false accusations and claims of sincerity. They'll have fun.
That is death to me, if I do it right.