my end

Okay, if you’re like me, you’re probably sick of hearing about the Giants and Patriots, so let’s do some counter programming and talk about something else more interesting: My impending death.

First off, I should say that I’m *not* terminally ill with a few weeks to live (as best as I know), nor am I about to kill myself or bring about some other premature end to my life. I just say “impending death” because when you think about it in the grand scale of time and the universe, all our deaths are “impending.”

Speaking of thinking about things, I think about my own death. A lot. Like every day a lot.

I suppose that means technically I *may* be obsessed with my death, you know, if you call having spent years trying to picture it in every single way imaginable—although I like to think that I just don’t like surprises, and want to know when it’s coming. I guess that’s kind of hardcore. Or disturbing.

I have actually had this pillow talk conversation with my wife:

Me: “Hey, can I ask you a favor?”

Sue: “Sure. What?”

Me: “So we’ve had a pretty good life together, right? Lots of good times.”

Sue [*wincing in dread of where this is going*]: “Uh, yeah….”

Me: “So out of respect for all that good stuff, can I ask that when you kill me—and let me say, when you do, nobody will blame you—that you don’t do it in my sleep. You know, if you want to push me down the stair, poison me, that’s all okay. Just not while I’m sleeping. I just don’t like the idea going to bed one night and never waking up. Okay?”

Sue: “Oh honey, don’t be silly. If *I* kill you myself, then I can’t collect the insurance.”

Me: “Oh yeah, right. So—HEY, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Sue [*smiling and looking off into the distance*]: “Oh nothing. Don’t worry about it at all.”

Another insight into how my mind works—when I’m sitting in the stall of the men’s room at work, my mind always goes to 9/11. What, you naturally ask, does a trip to the can have to do with the most heinous terrorist attack in the history of the United States? Good question. When I’m sitting there, all I can think about is that on that fateful Tuesday morning, some poor bastard was sitting in a stall up on the 90th floor of World Trade Center, reading the New York Daily News, looking over the box scores, when suddenly he hears an enormous crash, looks up and thinks for a split-second, “Hey, is that a PLANE?!” before everything goes black.

So yeah, death. I used to always say that I didn’t want to live forever, that I just planned on not dying. See how that works? Yeah, neither does the universe. Sure as I typing this, I’ll be dead some day. I accept that now, although I’m still hoping that before my time is up, they figure out how to keep my brain in a jar to be transplanted into some uber robot, although that’s fraught with problems, too.

Although I understand I may not be able to dictate the circumstances of my final moments, I do have a few guidelines that I hope I can adhere to. A sampling—

• I don’t want to be a Darwin Award winner.
• I don’t want my last words to be “Hey, watch this!”
• I don’t want to discover Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or aliens, only to be killed by any of them before I can claim my prize.
• I don’t want to die on my way *into* the famed grotto of the Playboy mansion for the first time.
• I don’t want to die in the arms of Richard Simmons. (Too many questions.)
• I don’t want to drop dead of a massive coronary in front of my kids.

To the last item, specifically, I’ve been trying to stay in shape, and that includes running. For the past few years, I’ve been doing laps at a nearby track, an old crushed gravel oval—it’s like old-school training. Along those lines, I don’t listen to music while I run; it’s just me and my thoughts, which sometimes turns out to be a good thing. I actually came up with this post while I was trotting around in circles earlier today.

Anyway, while running this past summer, I came up with an idea for a short story: “Track Time.” That’s right—a little fiction, thrown in there with all the other stuff I do. If you take the time to read it, I think you’ll be able to figure out how it ties in to this post and my “part” in the story. Hope you enjoy it!

P.S. If you’re interested, there’s more “web-exclusive” posts to read in the “other stuff” page.