Thread: Well, he died doing what he liked to do.

I was a sniper.... I did not want to die doing it.... I want to die in bed in my my sleep... That mentality is for people who have the luxury of making romantic decisions about their fate.. There is nothing to be glorified in death that is outside of the death one has during sleep.. It is a battle of the physical body and the mind that is horrible to witness... I have seldomly seen people give this earthreal plane up willingly...

Wow, some of the most thoughtful, personal, and even disturbing responses I have ever read on SRP are in this thread, even great poetry (BTW, I always tell my students that Death is by far the most personified concept in literature). You iron-workers and combat vets no doubt have experienced it more up close and personal than myself. And GI, I'd forgotten about Thoreau's brother. Didn't he hold the brother in his arms in the last throes of tetanus, as I recall?

As the first poster to use the "good death" quote, allow me to clarify: I don't think anybody ever, in the act of dying, and given time to be cognizant of said impending death before the plane cork-screwed in, said to themselves, "This is a good death." And though I have only seen (natural) death a couple of times, I have heard of examples of pious Christians (including my own grandmother), who truly believed they were heaven-bound, scream and cry for their vanishing life in their last hours. Yes, it is all too easy to philosophize about a "good death" in a movie, or even one's own in an abstract way. After all, obsessing about Death is our favorite obsession.

I know, for me and many others I've talked to, I can think of all too many "bad" deaths: drowning, burning up in a fire, caught in machinery, etc. Probably the lucky ones are the ones who, as one poster said, go quietly in their sleep, or else instantaneously (instant massive trauma in a collision out of nowhere, or similar). Lots of food for thought all around.

One more, this from Dylan Thomas ;

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Reminds me of this:

I want to die peacefully, in my sleep - like my grandpa;
Not screaming in terror, like the people in his car.

"It ain't the dying, it's laying in the damn grave so long..."

Well,,,for me I have "over-dosed" on this death thread.
I'm leaving & going to somewhere more exciting, like the "ugh,,,,,tape threads".

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Well,,,for me I have "over-dosed" on this death thread.
I'm leaving & going to somewhere more exciting, like the "ugh,,,,,tape threads".

A fate worse than death !

Gonna start another Williams thread myself, maybe one on Gold Dollars, lapping a Norton, and oh, yeah, oil on coticules.

Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

Gonna start another Williams thread myself, maybe one on Gold Dollars, lapping a Norton, and oh, yeah, oil on coticules.

I don't know any poems for those ... unless ....

Frost, Mending Wall

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I don't know any poems for those ... unless ....

Frost, Mending Wall

There once was a girl in Nantucket...