I was chatting to a close and dear friend, who told me of the death of one of her closest friends.
Apparently this guy had been a surgeon, who’d retired when he could no longer do it. Since then, he’d devoted himself to doing what he loved: fishing and hunting wild boar in Europe.
Seems as though he’d been doing the latter fun stuff in the Lower Pyrenees, an area renowned for its matchless rural scenery: high cliffs, deep ravines, sparkling streams of ice-cold water, you get the picture.
Anyway, he’d just shot a huge boar and using his cell phone, called his friends over on the next ridge to tell them this, but added that he wasn’t feeling too well. When his friends finally got there, they found him sprawled next to the boar, dead of a massive and unforeseen heart attack. He was in his mid-seventies.
Of course, my friend was all torn up over this death of a good friend, but let’s just think about this for a moment.
After a long, successful life, a man dies amidst gorgeous scenery, doing something he loved, something very manly withal — having just dispatched a massive, dangerous boar — and his own death was likewise quick and probably reasonably painless.
Is there anyone reading this who isn’t the teeniest bit envious of Our Aged, Intrepid Hunter?
I think that’s a good way to go.
As they said about Theodore Roosevelt, “Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.” -Vice President Thomas Marshall
Died with his boots on, doing what he loved. Just became an Official Texas Cowboy.
I turned 70 2 months ago and this subject has been weighing heavily on me. Maybe I’ll outgrow it.
The only thing I might do differently would be to NOT make that last phone call – never be found.
And leave all your friends worrying? Never mind the massive search that would ensue. No, that last phone call was the right thing to do.
What friends?
My wife and I moved to the woods 19 years ago to get away from all the headaches.
My paternal grandfather lived hard and passed the same way. He sired thirteen children and outlived two wives. Was a diesel mechanic and had a small farm in the Pennsylvania midlands. A bull once got away from him and dragged him down thru a pasture, severed a finger, before he got loose. He put the finger in the freezer and dispatched the bull with a 30.06 before calling the doctor. We had tough steak for awhile. At one point, some of his kids put him in a home. My youngest uncle broke him out and he finished his days on the farm, alone, the way he wanted. He was found, between the house and the barn, frozen in the snow, on his way to feed the livestock, on a February morning. He had had a massive heart attack. I don’t think he had any complaints.
Definitely a boss way to live and leave. RIP. Once your friend has got over the initial trauma I’m sure she will dwell on the many happy memories she has of him.
And I bet he had a boss funeral planned.
I have a friend who said his ideal death would be at age 75 or so and being shot by an 20 year old jealous husband.
That’s my ambition, too, but I want to go at age 99.
My Grandfather’s Uncle died at 98 walking to his restaurant in February in St, Louis. He was hit by a bus. We never did find out if the bus had to be totaled.
As compared to dying in a “nursing home” … incontinent, demented, unable to recognise family, aphasic, a dribbling, drooling parody of a human being?
I do NOT ever want my kids to see me like that! Let them live with the memory of what I was when I was important to them.
Dad died in his sleep. Peacefully. Arms crossed on his chest.
Mum had Alzheimer’s and no longer know who I was. Eventually, she decided she’d had enough and starved herself to death. No, thank you!
I am one of three lifelong friends, joining up for life’s adventures back in the early 1960s, all of us in our late 70s now. We seem cursed to outlast other acquaintances and even children. Just three old folks shuffling towards the sunset. Health issues prevent us from doing most things we used to enjoy. It won’t be very long now before the three become two. On that day, I do not look forward to making that horrible notification, nor do I look forward to receiving it. More importantly, I don’t want to be the one who leaves the others to carry on.
There is no good end to this, as I see it.
Died while doing something he loved. Can’t be many better ways to go. Certainly better than in a hospital bed hooked to machines.
Someday. Not yet
I’ve watched two of my grandparents die slowly, one due to Alzheimer’s and another due to dementia and other physical ailments, and am watching a third waste away both physically and mentally. She’s 94, confined to either her bed or a wheelchair that she can’t push on her own (her fault; she kept trying to deliberately run down people with her motorized chair), can barely hear, can barely see, can barely feed herself, can barely remember anything, can’t even use the bathroom without assistance.
No thank you.
I’d like very much to go out fast. Massive heart attack or something, but whatever it is, boom and dead before I hit the ground is infinitely preferable to wasting away for years or decades in a hospital bed or a nursing home.
I remember a woman writing about her father. He was at a craps table in Atlantic City, $800 ahead, with a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other – and fell over dead from a heart attack. She was said – but then thought “He went out happy.”
I’d like to die in my sleep like my uncle. Not like the 38 people that were in the bus he was driving at the time.
My Dad was a simple guy. COVID killed him at 88, but he got to spend the last few days keeping his eyes on his cows. My nephew made sure to feed them in front of his window, so he could count them and keep an eye on their weight, to make sure they were ready for the sale barn.
I won’t have it that could, but I’m glad he did.