I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about death. Not in a morbid way. In the way you think about it when you are above 7,000 metres and the wind is doing something to the tent that tents are not supposed to do.
So I made a list. Ten ways to die. I wanted to find the best one. The cleanest exit. The one that would let me say, when the time came, that I went out the right way.
I could not find it. Here is what I found instead.
One
In the sleep
Everyone says this is the good one.
Peaceful.
Painless.
You just do not wake up. Sounds wonderful until you realise you also did not get to say goodbye to anyone, did not finish the book, did not make the call you kept putting off.
You went to bed thinking there would be a tomorrow. There was not. Painless for you. Not for the people who find you.
Two
On a mountain
I have been close enough to know.
The cold does not feel cold after a point. The body shuts panels down one by one like a building losing power floor by floor. Climbers call it a good death.
I have met the families of climbers who died good deaths. They do not call it that.
Three
Drowning
The first thirty seconds are the worst thing a human body can experience.
Then it gets quieter. Then it gets dark.
Anyone who tells you drowning is peaceful has not asked someone who was pulled out at second twenty-nine.
Four
In a hospital, surrounded by family
The picture is nice.
The reality is tubes, fluorescent lighting, a nurse you do not know changing something you cannot see, and your wife trying to remember whether you wanted the last rites in Sanskrit or in silence.
Also expensive.
Also slow.
Also, in most cases, not actually surrounded.
Family goes for coffee.
People die during coffee.
Five
In an accident
An accident is the one death nobody prepares for. Maybe that is the only honest part of it.
Quick, they say. Sometimes.
Other times you are conscious for the eleven minutes it takes the ambulance to arrive, and you spend those eleven minutes thinking about everything you did not do.
Eleven minutes is a long time to think.
And surviving one, half broken, is often harder than the dying would have been.
Six
Heart attack on a treadmill
Ironic.
Cinematic.
Also an admission that the treadmill was the closest thing to a mountain you ever climbed.
Seven
By your own hand
I will say this once and clearly. This is the one I want to talk about properly. Everything else on this list is something that happens to you.
This is the only one you choose.
And of all the things a person can choose to do with the one life they were given, choosing not to have it is the smallest possible answer to the largest possible question. I have known people who took this exit. I am not angry with them. I am sad that nobody got to them in time to tell them that the worst day is not the last day.
The tragedy is not how a life ends.
The tragedy is when someone believes there is nothing left worth staying for.
Eight
Old age, in a chair, alone
The thing nobody warns you about is that you can live to ninety and still die badly if you arrive there with no one left who knows your name.
Long life is not the same as full life.
A man who outlives everyone he loved did not win.
Nine
Doing the thing you love
Sounds romantic.
Usually means the thing you loved killed you before you were finished loving it.
The mountain does not care that you loved it.
The ocean does not care.
The bike does not care.
Dying doing what you love is still dying earlier than you had to.
Ten
Of something boring. Cancer. Stroke. Liver. Kidney.
The most common ways.
The least photogenic. No story attached.
Just a slow accounting of a body that ran out of time.
Most of us, statistically, get this one. It does not make a good Instagram post.
So I went looking for the best way to die and what I found is that they are all, without exception, terrible. There is no clean exit. The cold one is not peaceful. The fast one is not painless. The slow one is not dignified. The chosen one is the worst of the lot. The boring one is what most of us actually get.
Which leaves only one answer.
The only way to die is to have lived so completely, so honestly, so fully, that when death finally finds you, whatever form it takes, it cannot take much.
Because you already spent it.
You climbed the mountain.
You walked the thousand kilometres.
You held the child.
You wrote the book.
You said the thing you were afraid to say.
You forgave the person you said you never would.
You sat in silence long enough to hear yourself think.
You ate the meal.
You took the trip.
You loved the people while they were still here to be loved.
Death does not become beautiful when you do this.
Death is not beautiful.
But it becomes irrelevant, which is a better thing than beautiful. Because it is part of the journey.
So if you have been waiting, this is your sign. Not to go climb a mountain.
Maybe just to make the call.
Buy the ticket.
Quit the thing that is killing you slowly.
Tell the truth to the person who deserves it.
Start the work you have been postponing for ten years.
Because there is no good way to die.
There is only a good way to live.
Live healthy and independent and happy and honest.
And then dying does not matter.
No Guts. No Glory.
Related article – What Do We Say to the God of Death?
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