Funeral Rites
Eight Ways I Don’t Want To Die
And how I can avoid it
In My Sleep
My grandfather died in his sleep. My grandmother said he died peacefully with a smile on his face. I’m not surprised. If I’d had to live with my grandmother for forty years, I’d have wanted to die too.
Seriously though, I don’t want to die in my sleep. Too final. Too sudden. I want to say something sentimental. I want to see the trees and the birds. Have a sip of beer, or a glass of wine. A cigarette for old-time’s sake.
I don’t want the whole thing to come down in the middle of the night. I want to know about it. Make sure I’ve definitely gone so I don’t spend the rest of Eternity wondering if I’m really dead.
On Horseback
Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a fear of falling off a horse. I once went on a donkey ride on Scarborough Beach, and saw another kid fall off onto the damp sand like a sack of potatoes. It was the way he tumbled off the donkey and lay there for a few seconds with everyone thinking he had broken his neck.
Then he got up and smiled. Adam Bennet was the eternal prankster who would later star in a minor British soap opera. And who would tragically die in a car crash coming back from a nightclub on Christmas Eve 1997. The guy who single-handedly destroyed any chance of me becoming a successful jump jockey. Because for those few seconds as he lay on the sand, I never wanted to go on the back of a four-legged, hoofed mammal ever again. Donkeys included.
Underground
When I was a kid, I went potholing in the Long Churn Cave System in North Yorkshire. It’s a relatively easy system to walk through, except the cheese press, a two-foot high passage from one cavern to another. The instructor said it was quite safe — it’d been there for 1/2 million years !— but when you’re between it, you feel like the jaws of the earth could close around you at any time.
After we’d been pressed, we emerged into the other cavern, where the instructor told us to turn off our lights, so we could “witness pure darkness like we were dead”. From that day on I decided to do my dying above ground.
In a Submarine
As I’m not in the Navy or involved in searching for lost shipwrecks like James Cameron, this is one of those scenarios that will never happen. But I still dread dying in a submarine. My grandfather — the one who died in his sleep — was in the Royal Navy WW2 Atlantic Convoys. He saw ships torpedoed by German U-boats. He saw men in the water, he saw men drown. And yet, he once said to me (and I’ll never forget this), “At least I wasn’t in one of those bloody U-Boats — that must have been terrifying.”
I agree.
Parachuting
When I was 19, I jumped out of a plane. There were eight of us doing a static-line jump, and I was Number 4 in line, and yet it was only when Number 3 had cast himself into the abyss that I got the fear.
There was a special hand signal where we could tell the jump leader that we wanted to back out (the flimsy plane was too noisy to talk), but I couldn’t remember what the signal was. Was it a thumbs up or thumbs down? So I just jumped, leaving my stomach on the plane.
I remembered nothing until I hit the ground. Luckily, the parachute had opened and I was alive. I haven’t parachuted since.
On a Plane
Not surprisingly, I’m also scared of flying. I can fly, but if there’s another option — like paddleboarding — I’ll take it. My brother’s a pilot, and he repeatedly tells me, “Flying’s fine: the safest mode of transport.”
Until you crash. Then it’s not fine at all. Then it’s very unfine!
I can’t remember the amount of times I’ve taken off and decided the plane was going to hit the ground at any minute! Every time, I run through all the ways I wouldn’t want to die — on horseback, in a cave, parachuting, in a submarine, in my sleep — and always add to the list at that point: On A Plane!
In Ikea
Can you imagine dying in Ikea? Would anyone ever find you? Maybe years later a store worker would find your desiccated skeleton in among the Uppland and Glostad sofa range. A perfectly preserved human in-between two Thorgun blankets that you’d wrapped yourself up in because you were so exhausted from looking around kitchens.
It wouldn’t be the worst place to die. Soft, warm, and comfortable. But imagine what it would say on your tombstone. That would be a disappointment.
Here Lies Philip J Ogley
Died Skiing in The Himalayas.
or
Died Heroically Fighting the Taliban.
or
Died in Rome aged 99.
or
Died in Ikea…
In The U.K.
In the sci-fi horror Pitch Black, there’s a part where the British archaeologist who’s just about to be eaten by a terrifying alien, says, “I thought I’d die in France.”
I feel the same. I’ve been to a lot of funerals in England and it always rains. Furthermore, people in my family always seem to die in winter, so it’s cold as well. Cold and wet. No thanks!
I want to die alone. Somewhere hot. Somewhere dry. The desert would be perfect.
Memo to self: die in the desert (not urgent.)
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