A treatise on death....

The 19-yr old boy who drove into the power pole on the roadway behind my home was apparently well known by many young people in Kingman.

Indeed, an 8X10 photo of the boy who didn't survive the shearing of the pole has been stapled to the new power pole at the site. There is a card or something stapled above it and there has been a fairly regular flow of visitors with some of them writing on the card. They stop, look around, some go down the embankment, return, get in their cars and leave. Someone put a post in the ground and attached balloons to it which won't last long in the strong winds we get around here.

I'm a bit surprised that my witnessing the accident seems to bother me as much as it does - I mean, people are being killed around here - they're listed in the paper - every day!

Many years ago I witnessed the crash of a B29 into a housing area where 30 men, women and children were killed - mostly burned beyond recognition. I heard the plane, heard the crash and saw the smoke! Later that morning as a dental tech I helped identify the remains with dental records and then helped haul them down to the morgue at the Naval base. -- Now that was and is a horrible memory which I relive every once in a while - but then we can become hardened to such things - used to death. I know our brains are designed to get used to things - mine did as I got used to assisting in oral surgery, for example.

I recall taking my father to the airport so he could seek yet another wife he had in mind back in Ohio. He had made the arrangements himself with a local travel agent so who was I to tell my 97-year old father that it would kill him? So at the San Francisco airport, I stood there at the ramp to the plane as the stewards wheeled him down the tunnel knowing that I'd never see nor talk to my father again - I felt sadness and loss - a reluctant letting go of part of my life, but I didn't have the feeling of violence and horror which I had experienced with the plane crash.

Again, when the assisted living home (not far from my home) where my 94-yr old mother was living called and said my mother had what they called the "death rattle" and asked whether I wanted to drive her to the hospital or have an ambulance, I, of course, opted to drive her.

They placed her in the seat beside me and I went ‘down the hill' to the hospital. If you've never heard the "death rattle" it is an unnerving sound. Every breath gurgled as she semi-reclined half-asleep beside me, I felt so helpless - this was my mother! I drove directly into the ‘ambulance only' entrance to ER and they took her up immediately as I re-parked the car.

In ER, the doctor gave her a shot of morphine and the gurgle stopped and she seemed peacefully asleep. Then the doctor asked if she had a medical will (which she had) - but I lied, said no, and asked for a prognosis. He told me that she was dying, that they could put her on life support, but even that wouldn't work for long - she's a very old woman.

You can't imagine the rush of thoughts through my mind in those few seconds until I finally asked that they make her as comfortable as possible and let her go - knowing full well that I was ending my mother's life. I knew by her will that she would have agreed. Again, I felt sadness and loss even more so than the death of my father which I passively had allowed to happen.

The reason I tell this is that I think there is a great difference between death when it is normal, calm and expected, sooner or later, and when it is sudden, unexpected and violent.

Most certainly I was most affected personally by the deaths of my parents - those deaths involved a sense of great sadness and loss to me. I could add to the list my grandfather and mentor and others I have lost over the years. I might add that Terry's death this Spring was not unexpected and was also of sadness and loss.

On the other hand, the deaths I had to deal with directly in the plane crash were horrifying and sickening due to the violence and destruction of people who had only moments before been living normal happy lives. It is, I think the same when the boy drove his truck into the power pole. At one moment he was a young kid with a future, friends and family and the next he virtually ceased to exist!

Thus it seems to me that it is not whether you die (we all will, of course), but how you die which makes a great difference - not to you necessarily - but to those who witness or are involved with you and your death.

On the one hand your death can be of sadness and loss but on the other - shock and horror!