Don't fear the reaper?

I read two rather tragic stories today.  A trainer at Sea World was killed by a whale, and an X-games skier was killed while skiing.  In the article I read about the skier, one person gave himself consolation by saying the skier died while doing what he loved.  I didn’t read that about the trainer, but it was clear that she was doing what she loved. She was doing what she dreamed of doing since she was 8 years old.

It got me thinking.  If you had a choice, would you want to die while doing what you love to do? 

I’m reminded of Dimebag Darrell (yes, I know what a dime bag is), the founder and guitarist of Pantera.  While playing on stage with his new band, Damage Plan, a fan who was angry at Dimebag for breaking up Pantera, went up on stage and shot Dimebag and a few others.  Dimebag was killed while on stage, doing what he loved.

But do you really think he wanted to go out like that? 

I have a hard time believing that the skier, the trainer, and Dimebag would have preferred to die the way they did.  But we’ll never know.

I remember in the movie “Matrix,” when Cypher was about to pull the plug on Switch, she said “Not like this.  Not like this,” in a sad, helpless, futile plea in those few moments she realized she was about to die.  That would be my thought if I had those moments to contemplate before my eventual death.  But is there a way I would say, “Yes, like this!  Like this!”?

I don’t think so.  Even if someone were to tell me I was going to die in my sleep and I wouldn’t feel a thing, I would be afraid to sleep.

The mode of death scares me, and that mysterious transition from life to death, I admit my anxieties in that.  I’ve had dreams when I had died.  Once I was shot.  I remember the fear that I felt knowing that I was about to die.  Though those dreams happened when I had no sense of eternal security, even now I would have that anxiety.  Not because of what happens after death, but the journey to get there.

I might also be thinking, “Wait, I haven’t finished all I had wanted to do.  Give me more time, God!”  

Death isn’t an exciting thing to contemplate on.  But I think it’s a good thing to do from time to time.  Maybe it will sensitize us to the deadly atrocities that happen around the world.  Perhaps when we read about the person murdered in the news, it won’t be “Oh, who died this time?”  But rather, understand the pain the person went through.

As I write this, I realized that perhaps my fear or anxieties of dying has softened my heart to these incidents like the trainer and the skier, to the young kid killed in the midst of street violence, to the many killed in genocide in far away nations.  Perhaps it’s a healthy fear.

Perhaps.