I have been thinking about death quite a bit lately. Especially about the 'how' part. Different people have different fantasies about this particular situation. For me I have almost zeroed in on dying in sleep, without lot of pain. The last part is important. I don't want to go through a detailed medical procedure and doctors declaring that nothing could be done now (a la Hindi movie style). I am already super-sensitive about the pain. I want somebody (preferably relatives!) to admit me to the hospital for a minor incident and then I'd sleep and die. As simple as that. Dying in house is not real fun (and lot of inconvenience to the family). Dying within professionals has its own advantage, for example, they know exactly what to do or more specifically know when to stop trying. At home you are at mercy of some half witted idiot thinking you might be just unconscious and urgent action is needed. At hospital one gets to die in company of young, friendly, weirdly dressed women. At home all you have is your old wife (if you are lucky enough!). The post-processing (I developed a software once called post-processor, funny now I think about it!), is rather easy in hospital and a routine procedure (as I recently learnt). On the other hand, death at home is one-off incident and in my religion celebrated as such with mourning and so on. Who wants that funny business? After all there are no feelings when you are dead!
All I want is clean, mid-sleep death. Now I know that I can not really ask for euthanasia in this country, I am sure the appropriate legislation would not come to India for a long time (even though many people want to die voluntarily, not because the disease, but because they can not earn their living in this great country of mine!). But I would want to try some similar techniques so the ultimate moment, whenever it comes, is effortless transition into lump of atoms from a living being. Sigmund Freud once said, "The goal of all life is death". He was describing Death Instinct (referring to Thanatos, the Greek god of death), found in all living things. An urge of returning to state of calm and ultimately non-existence. That is my goal, a quick transition to non-existence. I hope it would be easy.
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That is all very fine and almost everybody would like to die that way, if ever they get to thinking about it. The only problem with most of the people is whether they are happy about the kind of life they led, whether they have achieved what they had meant to when they were young; so essentially it is all about the contentment that you feel about life that you have led so far. Thinking about death can one way be a very positive thing. Once I was told by one very religious person-I keep meeting them all the time-that every life on earth has a purpose. (In fact I read the other day a very interesting quote-"Birth of every child is the proof that God has not yet lost hope with the human race") It is in this context that I too came to believe that my life has a purpose, and before my death, I must find out that purpose, and then try & act on it. No job can ever be done without a deadline, so it is better that we are all mortals, and have a definite dead-line (literally!) to accomplish whatever we do. Muse on it.
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