Tag: death

Nearly Died Again

I was driving to work yesterday in typically rainy weather in the Seattle area. I live a bit North of Seattle, where the median home price has dipped into the high $600K’s, ha ha ha so overvalued! ANYway, on the road and driving, and the people in my area drive pretty well. But I did have a moment where I thought, “This is it… I’m going to die.” Adrenaline is an amazing window-cleaner of your soul; I was crystalline in that moment, every image of my sons and my wife and my friends blinked. And I was terrified for a moment, but also had a flash of peace.

I had poured myself a hot cuppa into my insulated travel stein, which keeps the contents near their entry temperature for about 2 hours. It was worth the $7 I paid for it at Value Village, just had to scrape the lipstick off the side and paint over the “DONNA’S DIVORCE PARTY 2005!” on the side. And off I go…

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The Map Is Not The Territory
  1. I was driving down the hill from we I live, and the road winds down and around a number of blind curves. To the right is a guard rail, and beyond it a large ravine, as in 50+-foot steep-roll to the bottom-ravine. The rail is scarred and bent with reminders of speed and inattentiveness. A car coming up the hill crossed the centerline about one wheel’s-width into my lane. I swerved and blurted “HEY! Dude.” Nobody wants to die on the way to work, let alone be on the way to work.
  2. Around the bend, near the bottom, is an on-road that is a cut-over street from a neighborhood that sits beneath this hill. That cut-over helps people back in the corner of those ‘hoods to bypass about a half mile of turns, but only legally allows the person to turn to the Right, or DOWN the hill. The person at the intersection, coming up from the ‘hood, darted out to make a hard left UP the hill. The rain and traction didn’t mix, and I began to brake, hard, while the car behind me approached my rear-bumper at about 40mph. A car coming up the hill thought coming into my lane was a good move (it wasn’t), but I swerved, missed the cars, and horns were a-blaring. Heart’s racin’ now.
  3. Around the next curve is an elementary school, and is not in busing zone, so it’s 95% drop-off. Some people park across the street and walk over from a large lot. This was the drop-off period so there are easily another 300 cars in that spot in about 15min. There’s a light at the cross-walk, and to the East of that light is the school lot’s entrance. So if people are crossing, the light’s red, and the cars can turn into the school with no traffic. As I’m going 20 because of the School Zone, the guy behind me gets impatient and wants to cut ahead… As he starts to, a car pulls out of the parking lot across from the school and the cutter gets so close to my car I can smell the scent of his vape contraption (“Slavic Tramp”). He brakes, falls in line, and we’re back to it. This isn’t even a half-mile from home yet…
  4. I get through the left-turn which leads me eventually to work, and make a jaunt to the right at the next light. As I yield to the car coming across (per the signage), the guy behind me jams his horn like he’s in a jazz trio and starts gesturing as if his anti-spaz meds haven’t kicked in. I’m still rolling, just slower than 40, so I point to the Yield sign with my middle finger, which he takes as a conductor’s cue to hit that F# from the Kia again. I accelerate, swerve around another car that decided to just pull off with no warning, and a teaspoon of molten coffee escaped the travel-mug’s sippin’ hole. With the heat of nearly 3 suns, the drop hung in mid-commute, consumed enough gravity to turn downward, and landed directly on the most-specific spot of a man’s lap that hot liquids can cause the most discomfort. I thought “This is it… I’m going to die.”

I didn’t die. I yelled “WHY THE SHIT, AMERICA!?” and almost rear-ended this guy pulling into the gas station without his blinker on.

I did start draping a kitchen towel across my lap while commuting, however. Can’t be too careful.

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Ray or Lee Files, Again

I have a running, not totally complete list of stories regarding crimes perpetrated by people whose middle names are usually “Lee” or “Ray.”  I’m not sure why crime and those middle names are associated with each other; perhaps it’s an aural fixation by a low-rent brain.

So here we go again. I post these when I find them, and the time, as a reminder that naming kids does actually impact their lives.  Not everybody needs to be “Larry” or “Mary.” But what the shit… What the steaming shit, when kids with a middle name of Ray or Lee grow older (and perhaps not “up”), why are they committing heinous crimes?

Just for good measure, here’s another guy, same name, different state, also sexually assaulting minors.  Ricky Lee Grundy, Sex Offender, Bag of Shit.

PORT ORCHARD — A Pierce County man accused of pimping and raping underage girls has pleaded guilty in Kitsap Superior Court.

The Kitsap Sun reports that Ricky Lee Grundy Jr. entered his pleas Monday to human trafficking, promoting sexual abuse of a minor and three counts of child rape. (note – This is Ricky Lee Grundy JUNIOR… The Ricky Lee Grundy above may be his dad. Castration Station, immediately)

The victims were 14 and 15 years old. Sentencing was set for Sept. 25.

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Death With Dignity, Instead of What Some People Deserve

Brittany Maynard recently ended her life at the age of 29, having battled aggressive brain tumors for years.  As the tumors caused greater and more painful moments of being awake, and were found to be inoperable and terminal, Brittany called her own exit.  The story has been well chronicled so I won’t cover it again here.  However, a few years ago, this topic arose in Washington State, and it set my mind off into many different, somewhat dark regions.  Having grievously watched my dad’s slow decline to a shell of a man from 2004-2009 due to dementia, the impact and effects on my family and his friends, I really began to wonder what I would do if my health came to a similar state.

The Death with Dignity act, or “physician-assisted suicide,” is available to people who have a terminal illness, incurable & excruciating pain, or have been talked into it by some family members.  There’s a review process after applying to a few doctors, findable via Google and maybe Yelp?  The applicant goes through a fair amount of testing to see what’s going on, and to make sure they’re not trying to get out of jury duty.  Plus there’s the “less than 6 months to live” criteria. Seems subjective, but whatever…

So in all of this involvement of doctors and pharmacists and party planning and “affairs in order” and what-not, comes two main points I think must be addressed.

  1. Is It Wrong?  This is, by nature, a judgmental and personal-ethics statement within each person’s answer.  Is choosing your own biological death’s date, based on a terrible illness, via the quiet undertow of a massive barbituate dosing, more acceptable than other forms of ending one’s life?  Or is it in the days preceding your passing that keep it on the “light side,” being able to say Goodbye and take care of all the particulars and throw a party and cut the line at Starbucks every morning, Bucket List items and what-not?
  2. What If It Doesn’t Work? You’ve said your “good-byes”, or “go F yourself”‘s, whatever the case called for.  Your belongings are accounted for, donated, burned, repurposed, etc.  And you gulp down the pills that are going to drop your blood-pressure to NIL, shut down your brain’s ability to fire off your heart muscles, and you’ll drift into the Great Other.  Until BAMMO you wake up again barfing all over your Red & Gold Satin Burial robe, wondering why Heaven would welcome home a lost angel in such a horrific fashion, or maybe this isn’t Heaven, OH NO, IT’S WORSE… It’s your living room.
    THEN what?  I’d have a quick call to the prescribing doctor and see what the deal is.  But at least you could start calling friends a few days later and freak them out.  Your number comes up on their phone in the middle of their brunch, EEEEEE, creepy for them, FUN FOR YOOOU!

In a time when a fair number of people choose this route I wonder how much Brittany’s beauty played into it.  Seriously, a young, beautiful person (by most standards) with a tragic illness chooses to die a few days after her husband’s birthday, and it’s national news for quite a while.  What about the 78 year-old with colon cancer and carry-on colostomy bag, where’s their press?

I’m all-for the controlled slide to the Afterlife if your health is failing and you wake up to a painful existence every day.  Sure, there might be a cure around the corner.  There might be a pharmaceutical lottery win with your name on it. Or a natural cure right in your own back yard that somebody finds the day after you pass.  But you should call your own shot if your body is taken over by cancer-caused agony.  Can you be a role model of strength and endurance to those around you?  For how long?  Would you call a “deadline” (ha ha) to it, and if you’re not better by that date, Drop the Beats, DJ, this party’s starting?

In case you can’t go the quiet Rx route, involving doctors and lawmakers and news pundits, give me a call. I have access to a human catapult and some moonshine, we’ll go out like a hero in the parking lot of your workplace.  As long as your insurance covers 80%.

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To Have Died Young In One’s Prime

I started down a path that would have likely led to some disgruntled comments from people who would know of whom the original post was about.  And therefore I retracted that information.  But I will say this:

When people lament the loss of a life, “snuffed out too soon, gone before their time,” you have to really look at the circumstances around the death before we assign an appropriate check-out time.  When Brittany Murphy died a few years ago after a drug overdose, there were a LOT of people outside the Murphy camp but emotionally invested (for whatever reason) in her life, saying she had died too young.  Yes, she was young.  But you’re never too young to die from the illnesses you refuse to treat, such as drug addiction or flammable colon gas.  And how many people tried how many times in how many different ways to get Brittany healthy?  Ultimately it was a psychological drive to drugs, which then killed her, which had gone unrooted and untreated, and perhaps untreatable.  It’s sad.  And it’s even more sad when it happens to somebody who isn’t famous, who didn’t have any money to handle expenses, and leaves behind a family to pick up the pieces.  And by “family” I mean children, not a co-dependent  spouse or lecherous entourage lacking any discernible talent.

And at the same time, I noted the following in a moment on-stage a few years ago, while pondering the deaths of young people.

  1. Young men between the ages of 15 and 27 do dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb and stupid stuff more than anybody else, based solely on testosterone, lack of forethought, and a throbbing life-boner.  Driving drunk, driving fast, mohawks, energy drinks, fraternity drinking, borderline date rapes, parking lot fights, etc. Therefore they should all be defaulted into Organ Donor status.  Perfectly healthy crop of lungs and hearts and kidneys can be harvested for the poor folks waiting for one of these dipshits to roll his Jeep or mis-judge the cross-wind of a bridge jump.  I still can’t believe I’m alive considering the [OMITTED FOR LEGAL CONSIDERATION AND BECAUSE MY KIDS MAY READ THIS ONE DAY] for an entire month.
  2. The loss of realized potential is what is most crushing.  The time to share Life with that person ends, BAM, done.  Nothing more.  Grief sets in and confuses and crushes and drives people to sadness and despair and rear-window “In Memory Of” decals. When that life ends there’s nothing more that can be capitalized upon; no professions, no vacations, no kids or grandkids or victories on competitive cupcake bake-offs. 
  3. The person to which I thought of and referred to, originally, died before he hit 30 years old.  Model-like good looks, dashed in a tragic accident.  He’ll never get older than 28.  He’ll never wrinkle, or gray, or sag.  He’ll never wake to the cries of a screaming child 3 times a night and suffer a day of fatherhood and work and tiring of the Grind.  Because he drove too fast for the conditions, and an accident happened.  Really very sad, for the rest of us who are going through all of that.  Nobody will ever know what he looked like as a fat, balding, bitter desk jockey.  Lucky bastard.

So before we wail and groan when a life goes too soon, please look at the circumstances of it for a Reality Check.  At what age is somebody NOT “too young” to die?  I am hoping to die much like my great-grandfather, in his sleep at the age of 91, shot by a jealous lover.

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