Died doing what he/she loved to do...

This is another departure from the fishing thing, but hey it's my blog so please, a little patience.


How many of us have heard that phrase?

We read an obituary and somewhere inside the body of the document you read "at least he died doing what he loved to do". Or you attend the funeral of some poor unfortunate soul and a member of the mourners committee pops that one on ya.

My position on this is that I have never heard such bullshit in my entire life.

There is no freakin moment of clarity just before the plane crashes into the ground. Nor is there any moment of quiet understanding for the climber that has broken free from his earthly tether and is rushing headlong to his impact point 500 feet below.

The other day I read that a sky diver had died doing what he loved to do, skydiving. Not only wrong but fuckin wrong. That skydiver died screaming and clawing at the air before him imagining what it was going to feel like as his ass went screaming helter skelter through his forehead.
In short he died doing what he had been trying to avoid for the 1100 previous sky dives. He died when he slapped the ground like a fast ball hitting the glove of a major league catcher.

I love how we have to rationalize what death is either all about, or means.

My position is and has always been that death is simply what it is. It will mean different things to different people largely based on how they were raised. You either fear it, embrace it, or ignore it. Regardless of how it hits your brain pan, the result is the same...no more you.

So as we go forward and I die in a tragic trout fishing accident. Please whomever writes my obituary, refrain from saying that I died doing what I loved to do.

Chances are unless I died because Jennifer Aniston walked out of the woods nude and offered to make love to me and I died from the resulting heart attack just as I finished...I probably died kicking and screaming pissed to high heaven and scared shitless.