We all do it eventually, but there’s something about dying that seems totally unfair to me. Something besides the never seeing anyone you love again or their ever again seeing you. It’s that, as a storyteller, I will never be able to sum up my death in a few (or a bunch of) words, or make a joke about its irony if applicable. I don’t by any means want people to joke about my death (you jerks), but as someone like me would tend to do, I want to talk about how it happened. I want to give the whole story and provide logic, or point out the absence of logic.
I never thought about it much until a good friend of mine passed away a few years ago in a car accident. A mutual friend of ours said something to the effect of “I want to know what song she was listening to.” Well, fuck, that’s morbid. At the time I shot back “You won’t ever know, so why even consider it?” But oddly, I have considered the fact that I might die accidentally and just before I did, in my final struggle, I would tap out to that inquisitive friend a quick text to say “It wasn’t fucking ‘Free Bird’. It was ‘Regulators’… yeah I listen to that, see you in Hell.” In reality though, I probably will not have the time, and why would my last-ever text be with regards to the music playing? I love music, but really. It’s the stories I love most. It’s among many other reasons why I’ll never love dubstep.
Kurt Vonnegut had a wonky ending, falling and hitting his head and eventually succumbing to his injury, and Hunter Thompson’s literally ended with him shooting himself in the head on the telephone with his wife. I’m not sure about them (Vonnegut probably), but those are the things I would want to remark upon.
I guess the best thing we can do is discard the negative parts of our life that do not make any sense, aspire to be something we love, enjoy the hell out of our day-to-day lives and hope we die in our sleep and wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it anyway.
Optimism at its most cynical, kids.
