More Ruminations on Death and Dying

Warning: This post is going to get a little macabre, and probably pretty self-indulgent. I apologize, but it's my damn blog, so I do what I want with it.

Also, Erika...you probably shouldn't read this. Just trust me.

I'm sitting at my desk. It's 1:45 PM, and I've just finished my Lean Cuisine -- Chicken in Peanut Sauce. I'm watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy, hunched over my keyboard with my feet folded underneath my chair.

I've had a pretty bad headache all day, probably from stress or dehydration. I take two Tylenol every couple of hours, and that's helped me get through the day.

I cough involuntarily, and notice that my heart is racing. I lean back in my chair and take a couple of deep breaths. My heart is still racing. I loosen my belt and take a drink of water. Something clicks in my head, and I hear a buzzing noise and the pain in my head goes from "irritating" to "debilitating." Suddenly I can't focus on the screen in front of me, and I try to just focus on breathing as I slump back in my chair. Sounds are echoing in my head, distantly.

I try to lift my hand to the phone, but my arm won't move. I'm still breathing, but I can't see anything -- my field of view is now just a blurry dot in the center of my vision. I need to make noise, so I try. I moan, grunt, sigh, anything to catch my coworkers' attention. Hopefully they'll see my unconscious body and come to my aid. Shouldn't be long -- people walk by my cubicle all the time.

I have a lot of thoughts racing through my head. Is this a panic attack? Am I having a stroke? Is this going to cost a lot of money? Will my brain ever work the same?

Will I survive?

Unfortunately, I've had a brain aneurysm.

My coworkers find me and I'm taken to the hospital, which is just a couple of blocks away. I survive the trip, and live on life support for a couple of days, but I'm essentially a vegetable. Eventually, after the family has a chance to gather, my life support is terminated.

In a couple of days I've gone from a normal, seemingly healthy 32 year old man with all kinds of silly notions and opinions, to a boring old corpse.

This is my greatest fear, and also my biggest obsession. Consequently, it's probably a source of quite a bit of tension for me, as I've self-diagnosed myself with "stroke-like symptoms" probably a half-dozen times this year.

Dying scares me, and I think rightly so. Self-preservation is hard-wired into every single living thing, thanks to evolution. But then again, fear of death for a healthy individual is (as far as I know) just for us humans.

But I think about death a lot, and it bums me out.

For example: a road I take every day was closed this morning. I figured there must have been an accident or something. So I got to work and found this article: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=8440070

This fatal accident happened about 2 hours before I cruise down that road for my commute. I drive a scooter. If this had been me, it would have been very bad.

Sometimes dying makes sense -- old people die all the time. Dumb people die all the time. Sometimes people get struck with genetic diseases, or get cancer for whatever reason. People take years to die, or can die in just a couple of months after ignoring symptoms.

But sometimes dying is just totally unfair.

For instance, there's this article from the Seattle Times about a couple that was sitting in their Hyundai, waiting at a stoplight. As they were sitting in their car, probably listening to the radio, or talking about inane stuff, an SUV came barreling down the street and smacked into them, going about 80 miles per hour. The Hyundai caught fire, and the couple, doing nothing at all to put their lives in danger, died together.

http://o.seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016772748_lakecitycrash16m.html

Stuff like this is just not fair. They weren't driving fast. They weren't drunk or doing drugs. They were sitting in a stopped car, and they met an unimaginable fate.

So what do I do when I see this? Usually I gasp in horror and think about how it could have happened to me, or to someone I love. Then I look for names.

Kristopher Martin was one of the people killed in the Hyundai.

I want to see Kristopher's face.

There's a picture of him in the article. Looked like a nice enough guy...probably vegetarian, shopped at Trader Joe's. Probably liked hiking. I've known a lot of guys like Kristopher.

He was also in a band called "Touch My Hand for Tenderness." I wondered if there were any clips of the band on YouTube. There were.



Typical Seattle Indie band kind of feel. On the YouTube channel, they've listed their genre of music as "Adventurous Creative Ineptitude." Self-deprecating; I love. I also love that they're basically playing on a patio, with a bunch of people walking around between the camera and the band. Kristopher's playing guitar, and he's also the lead singer. He wasn't a very great singer, but he was a pretty decent musician. He looked really tall, too.

After a little time poking around, I feel like I knew Kris pretty well. I probably wouldn't have been friends with the guy, but I could have had a pretty good conversation with the guy.

I couldn't find much about his girlfriend, but then again, I didn't look very hard. She seemed like a nice, quiet, academic type.


But I felt a compulsion to get to know this people...which is basically why I have this blog.

I'm not going to last forever. Hell, I might go tomorrow...and I honestly don't know what my obituary would look like. It wouldn't be very impressive -- it'll be tragic, sure, because of the wife and infant son and my young age and all that...but as far as "achievements," it's not like I built the Hoover Dam or anything like that. I'm just a guy who lived for a while, procreated, then all the sudden wasn't there any more. Nothing legendary or epic about my life to merit any more than a passing mention in the newspapers, depending on the details of my demise.

But I'd like to have some kind a legacy. Not some major "honorary award" kind of legacy, but just something where people who knew me could come and go, "Oh yeah...that guy. Huh." And people who didn't know me could come and go, "Oh, this guy was fascinated with his own death. That's ironic."

Basically, this blog is my legacy.

Because, as you might know, I've been doing a lot of family genealogy. The last couple of generations are pretty well fleshed out, as I've got photographs, family stories, and personal experiences with these people. I've written down what I can, because that's the kind of flavor later generations will enjoy. But you go back 100 years in my family tree all I have are the occasional black and white photo, and a lot of handwritten census bureau information. I don't know those people, and I wish to hell that I did.

So, ultimately, I'd just like people to know me...if they're curious. I'm sure there are other folks out there who feel some sense of obligation to honor the recently deceased...especially those that met sudden ends, under tragic circumstances. I'd like to give those folks the opportunity to know me, should I meet with some kind of untimely demise. And if I don't, then I'm totally fine with that, and instead this can just be a place to funnel the delusions of a man who thought his life was worthy of some kind of public scrutiny.

Injured...

Quick update time: I've been taking Karate (technically Hapkido) lessons for the last three months.

Okay, up to date now? Good.

So today I went to my usual 6:45 PM lesson at the Team Karate Centers in Woodland Hills. I was running late, so I came in at the end of the stretching (this would prove crucial).

After a few warm-up roundhouse kicks, me and my fellow orange belts started doing some "power kick" drills with a partner. The first one was the front kick. I ripped off about ten of those without a problem. The next drill was the switch front kick, where you quickly switch your feet then kick with your off-foot.

My first kick was great. But on the second one, right after I switched my stance, someone whacked me in the back of my calf with a staff or stick or something.

I was a little irritated so I whipped around to face my attacker. No one was there.

Oh. Shit.

I took a seat on the mat. Ow. Owowowowow. First thing I thought was: Achilles tendon. I remember hearing horror stories in my football days of guys rupturing their Achilles tendons, and having it bunched up in a little ball in their heel.

I felt my Achilles. Still there. The pain was focused on the meaty part of my calf, well out of the way of my Achilles.

Speaking of pain. Yeah. It was not going away. It wasn't getting any worse, but it was kind of just this low, aching rumble. I knew I had myself a classic "bad injury."

Someone fetched some ice for me, and I sat on the mat...lamely holding the plastic bag of ice on my injured calf muscle while I tried to wrap my head around this. I've never had any kind of crippling injury before, after about 20 years of competitive sports in my youth, so this was a new thing for me. Images of emergency rooms, surgeries, pain meds, and medical bills swam through my head.

I told my Sensei that I was done for the night. He told me to take three days off and get some rest. I nodded, bid him goodnight, hobbled to my car, and threaded my way through a clogged 405 freeway.

When I got home, Google calmed me down a bit. From my good friends at Foot Education: "Calf (Gastrocnemius) muscle tears commonly occur in middle-aged recreational athletes while performing actions that require sudden changes in direction."

Recreational athlete? Yep. Middle aged. Yep. Change in direction? Uh huh. Looks like I got me a torn calf muscle. I remember when I was young and limber and invincible...ah well. Crap like this is just going to start happening to me now, I guess.

Bummer.

So, the good news is: no surgery (probably). Bad news is: crutches, pain, immobility, and a terrible inability to render parental assistance. I guess it could be worse...