Having chronic illness and dying isn't as easy as you might think. I was to die a couple years ago now, but I'm still here enjoying my medical misery. My kids think I'm really doing a bad job of dying. They are probably right. The usual neglect and abuse isn't working like it used to. Even after taking a couple of my favorite pills away, the doctors keep giving plenty of others to take. But I don't think that's it. I think it's because I'm having difficulty in deciding how to die. There are just too many options.
These are a few of my considerations:
1. A hail of bullets where I take out at least a couple assassins before they get me. Something like on TV where the bad guys never can hit the main characters even with assault rifles.
2. A two to three day binge of everything I'm not allowed to eat like Cinnabons, milkshakes, orange slices, peanut butter pies and anything with lots of salt or fat.
3. Accidentally tramped by a herd of buffaloes while trying to photograph a baby white buffalo that meant that all would return to normal after Trump's one term.
4. Dying from a lack of oxygen because of the affects of climate change and an ill-advised trip over the Great Divide.
5. Killed by a falling Dale Chihuly glass chandelier on my first trip to the museum after making a miraculous recovery.
6. Returning to Vietnam and living in a village where I eat amazing pork, drink Beer 33, and die in an mine field of my choice.
7. Being killed in an accident where the state troopers said that I must of been driving the fastest Ford Explorer ever made.
8. From not following through with an email that may or may not have threatened death. But ultimately, my cynicism finally took its toll.
9. Drowning. I spent a lot of time in my youth in water. I think it would somehow be rather comforting. Although, I really don't know that for sure.
10. From inhaling too many brush cleaner fumes after painting a masterpiece that I could never explain how I did it.
11. Heart failure from thinking about all five times I made love. Two of which I'm still questioning.
You can see why the choice is so hard to make. But chances are that my death will come with very little of my input.
But rest assured, I have what comes after that pretty well locked down. My heaven is a nice (actually quite big) cabin or stone house in the woods that has rooms for virgin nuns who have taken the vow of silence. It sits by a large lake where you have the option of taking a boat or walking on water to get to the other side. Nearby there is a racetrack where I can compete against Danica Patrick during the day in various types of road and oval cars. And a Cuban bar where I can talk with Ernest Hemingway in the evening over drinks and well prepared fish. ...Oh! And of course there's a Cinnabon's.
At one point, I was called "the miracle baby." I don't expect to be called "the miracle geriatric." I would be concerned about death if it weren't for the fact that so many have gone before me. I figure it is just one more of those paradoxes in life.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a good example of a human who is not going to change his mind. I'm another one. I've always liked the old song "How Big is God?" How big and wide his vast domain. But you don't really need to go to the furthest reach of the Cosmos to believe there is more going on than just the factual physical world. Without God, life is a crapshoot at best that easily divides life into winners, and losers, and in-betweeners. For me, the belief that life will be made right is a lot easier than a belief that life rewards the better and the best.
It's one thing to be leery of being compassionate when it could mean a threat but otherwise, is there really a good enough excuse for a government system where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, where war is more important than drought and famine, where the size of the military is more important than health care and other basic needs, where a few can gut a nation of the money needed to improve life for everyone, or where a petty strongman can rise on the prejudices and fears of people who didn't believe that change could ever lead to the loss of rights and freedoms instead of the assurance of them that was promised. I would settle for a heaven that was a just a world that worked on making life better for all. That would be a post chronic illness that I could live with.
BONUS PIC
