Please not foreshadowing

How many of you expect to die?

I read the post on the NY Times entitled "How many of you expect to die?" Haven't read it? Go ahead. I'll wait.

The line that struck me hardest?

"The reward for living past age 85 and avoiding all the killer diseases, she said, is that you get to rot to death instead."

The post discusses the three most common ways of dying, which doesn't include the tragic, often violent, accidents that people hear about for the young (car accidents, fires, etc.). Instead, the speaker offers cancer (your body eats itself), chronic heart failure or emphysema (your heart or lungs give out), or frailty and dementia (the slow decline of health and mental capabilities, coupled with a slow decline in the quality of life - in other words, rotting to death).

I've maintained for years that I'm dying on my 120th birthday. That's my plan. Kris isn't too happy with it, having promised to try to make it to only 75 himself, but granting me permission to kick his headstone if he dies before 75. Sometimes I say my 121st birthday. Sometimes I tell Kris he has to live to 80.

Regardless, the plan is much longer than my grandparents' 80 years.

Being able to look at my grandparents' deaths, and extrapolating, I'm looking at cancer, lung cancer, Alzheimers and a broken heart. Yeah, not kidding on that last one. I'm pretty sure that's how my grandfather died after my grandmother passed. The will to live didn't last long after she went.

I used to be completely terrified of dying. I know the source of that fear was that I hadn't lived. Stuck within myself, I didn't know how to be comfortable with who I was. I'm not explaining it well.

Kris on the other hand, just doesn't think about it. Guy didn't either. Part of their charm, I think. When I talk to Kris about, he'll say, "Well, I've lived a good life."

And that's the point. Those who live a good life, full of adventure and purpose and enjoyment and fun, those who see the world as a good place, there's not so much fear. I live in one of the safest places in the area, but I lock all my doors, and close all the windows before going to bed at night. I always lock my car door. I worry about the house. I worry about the dogs. I worry about my world crashing down around me, through no fault of my own, but rather because of a vindictive peripheral person, or a governmental computer error.

The world isn't a good place for me as it is for Kris (even though it's much better than it used to be, that's for sure). I worry too much. Even Kris says as much.

Yet, I worry less about dying than I used to.

I can't say quite yet that I've lived a good life. I've tried hard to be a good person, and surround myself with good people. I've done a great job with the latter, always working on the former.

I don't want to die, though I'm coming to expect it, to understand just how finite my time is. I'm finally less inclined to say yes if I don't mean yes (thank you, Andy, for that lesson), but still need to work on not collapsing into myself, to take chances, to head to social events outside of ultimate, outside of my comfort zone. That's a hard part for me.

You get 80 summers in this life, if you're lucky. You get 80 winters in this life, if you're lucky. You find love if you're lucky. You find good friendships if you're luckier.

So far, I think I'm doing okay.

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