COMMENTARY: Unprepared for life’s biggest event: sudden death

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Elizabeth Auster is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland). UNDATED _ We plan so carefully for the little things in life: what to wear to a party, how to coordinate next week’s schedule, where to go on vacation, what to serve for dinner. We buy calendars and organizers, […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Elizabeth Auster is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland).

UNDATED _ We plan so carefully for the little things in life: what to wear to a party, how to coordinate next week’s schedule, where to go on vacation, what to serve for dinner.


We buy calendars and organizers, insurance policies and retirement funds.

Still, we are not prepared _ most of us _ for the biggest thing in life: the moment when we will disappear, leaving all our plans behind.

How many parents never get around to choosing guardians for their young children? How many adults never get around to writing wills? How many people really want to sit down and plan for a future that doesn’t include them?

Some days, though, it is impossible not to think of such things.

Maybe it is the day you read an obituary of someone young who keeled over while jogging, or died in a car accident while on vacation.

For me, it is the thought of all those passengers sitting in the Swissair jet that crashed near Halifax, Canada, full of thoughts one moment about the long trip they were just beginning, and realizing suddenly that within seconds they probably would be dead.

I keep seeing a cabin full of smiling, well-dressed people, brimming with anticipation. Flights to Europe aren’t like domestic flights, after all. They are bigger, more sprawling affairs. The planes are usually larger, the seats wider, the ride longer.

And so, at the start of a trans-Atlantic flight, it is only natural for passengers to make more of a production of sitting back and getting comfortable _ breathing in slowly the expansiveness before them, the hours ahead with no obligations until the plane lands. There are no phone calls to answer, no meetings to attend, no dishes to wash, no errands to run.

It is only natural, at the start of such a trip, to inhale that sense of the wide-open road _ or sky _ spreading before you.

Which is why it is so jarring to think of such passengers, having barely settled into their flight, abruptly learning not only that they wouldn’t make it to Europe, but that they might never make it home _ to say goodbye to their parents, witness their children’s graduations, iron out a few feuds, squeeze a few shoulders.


It is only natural for us, watching on television as the debris floats in the ocean, to wonder what we would have been thinking if we’d been in that cabin, heading down with life jackets on, eyes shut tight, and seconds to go.

Would we care who would be in charge of making sense of our lives when we were gone? Would we care who would go poking through our closets and drawers? Would we care what they might find in our diaries and mailboxes?

Would we have thought in those last seconds of what we would have done if we’d known we weren’t coming back _ whom we would have kissed, whom we would have kidded, whom we would have chided and whom we would have guided? Would we have wished we had done things a little differently?

Probably.

If we knew now that we had only another week, most of us would change our plans immediately. We’d cancel half our meetings, burn half our belongings, cut short half our conversations. We’d forget about money, immerse ourselves in beauty, find the people we love and tell them why.

We’d stare at the moon and soak in the sun. We’d play with the kids and sit with the old folks. We’d laugh at anything and cry at everything. We’d hardly sleep at all.

We would make sure every hour had meaning, knowing it was almost the last, knowing the best way to die is with the consolation that we have lived.


DEA END AUSTER

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