How Would YOU Like to End Up??

This question was asked of me in the LL, and I figured that it was worth asking the Saloon-at-large.

My reply was that I want to go with my wits (mostly) about me, in my own bed, in my own home, having outlived all my adversaries and doctors....and having the capability to celebrate that fact!!

So......How do YOU want to go?

Doing something interesting, exciting, adventurous.  Something where I am still experiencing something new, learning about something different.

And then my daughters have instructions to send my ashes to the moon.

A Ten funeral and an Irish wake

Duzzenmatta! When it happens, it happens!

I'm too young to think of that!!!

By Tan funeral you mean a Sky Burial?  I attended one and it was incredible.

I have a young Tan friend (25 this year) and I asked him what he wanted to happen to him and he immediately answered 'Sky Burial'. For him, it would be an honour.

Not too young Cheeks!

When I was 18 I read the Tan Book of the Dead.  Not the funeral but what happens when you die.

Ahh.. OK.  But the Irish wake sounds like fun too. Alcohol and stories.

LE, I don't plan on dying for a long time. But I am going to accept when it comes to me as it comes.

One thing: I don't want people crying at my funeral. I want them to dance and rejoice. I believe in afterlife and I won't be really dying, I'll be just going to more amazing adventures.

a nice deep dive in warm fish infested waters with good scuba gear... droppin... droppin... droppin... buzzzzz... droppin... buzzin... `dead 

failsafe too, once yer that deep, aint no comin up alive without plenty extra tanks!

be so high after a couple hunert feet ya wouldn't notice that you drown.

be a truly peaceful way to go & no one would have to worry bout a body.

& it would also mean I have a working brain at the end, `before the buzzzzz......

Doing something interesting, exciting, adventurous.  Something where I am still experiencing something new, learning about something different.

EG, a liver transplant?

Brings to mind the conversation between Barney Gumble [resident alcoholic in "The Simpsons"] and David Crosby.
Barney: You're David Crosby? You're my hero!
Crosby: You like my songs?
Barney: You're a musician??

I don't know how I would like to go, just how I would not like to go. I don't want lie in a sterile hospital room, tubes sticking out everywhere, odd machines going bleep, plink, doing-doing-dong, doctors prodding and poking me, filling me full of every wierd concoction they can come up with and in general playing Konrad Dippel with my body. Saw my grandpa go that way, not for me, no sir.
Don't want to sit drooling in some nursing home, while Alzheimers or dementia or similar nasty stuff has eaten away at my mind, leaving only a hollow husk, a breathing, eating nothing. Cogito ergo sum, according to Descartes, and at that stage there is nothing. No coginitve functions, just someone who died a long time ago and the Reaper is just taking his sweet time to finish the job. Alzheimers and dementia scare me. I would probably live with the diagnosis but, once it got too much, before losing all my faculties, I would end it myself. I firmly believe the people have the right to chose not to end up a vegetable, whatever other people's ethics and religion might have to say on the subject matter.
The only thing I can think of that could be worse would be to lie in a sickbed, just feeling the sand run out, all that time you thought you had, gone, vanished, and thinking "I wish I had..."
Two nights ago, a nineteen year old guy was walking home in Copenhagen. Two teens accosted him, said they wanted his woolen hat. He refused and they stabbed him to death. That same morning a 36 year-old woman dropped off her daughter at the kindergarden and was squashed by a truck 10 minutes later as the driver failed to notice her on her bicycle as she was turning right.
I guess what I mean is that Death comes in every guise and shape and picks us off at random and many people who should die in a bed of old age surrounded by loved ones are just not that lucky. If someone can say, after you are dead, that at least you lived while you had the chance, that seems more important than how you shed this mortal coil.
Guess I should go to bed now, I am rambling.

Good ramblings, though Eric.  I'm with you on the 'how I don't want to die' and I'm with AMonk on how I'd like to go.  There are pros and cons about going quickly or having some notice (ie terminal illness).  Quickly is (mostly) painless for the deceased but really hard on the family and friends left behind. So much unsaid.  Having some notice gives everyone a chance for closure, but can be rough on all as the dying person suffers and the others stand by helplessly.

I'm thinking of the scene in Private Benjamin where Goldie Hawn's new husband dies as he's saying, "I'm coming, I'm coming."  Rough on the partner, but a heck of a way to leave this earth.

I'm also with Cheeky on the celebration aspect.  I'm going somewhere better than here.  Be happy.

  I'm going somewhere better than here.  Be happy.

Tahiti?

To Simpsonize this again, in the "Horror Halloween" episode when Ned Flanders is killed by a zombie for his useable parts, he has a brief glimpse of heaven. Buddha is ruling the roost. Ned realises that years of fundamentalism, not to mention his degree from Oral Roberts University, have dudded him.

My father had a fairly protracted, painful and undignified death. However, it let the rest of the family plan ahead. Selfish, I know.
His final words before the drugs took over: "Why does it have to end like this?" I'd be interested in the answers the different faiths have on this one.
However, once the drugs were working, he was having a wonderful time. We learned more of his WW2 service, as he relived it, than we ever got out of him earlier. His really final words, delivered to the military chaplain in the vets hospice, were "F*** off".