I Can’t Believe This

Shoveling snow is a depressing job. And it might cause some unexpected effects, like weird thoughts rushing into one’s mind. I really thought about this when shoveling snow:

In heaven, when people first meet, the question they ask each other will not be “what’s your job” or “where are you from”, but rather “how did you die?” When other people say, “I died of heart attack” or “gun shot” or “hanging”, I would like to say, “I died of laughter.” Even if I die of a broken heart as a jilted lover, or frozen to death under a pile of snow, I will lie and say “I died of laughter”.

I would prefer laughing myself to death if I can choose the way I die. However laughing may not be a legitimate way of death, since I’ve never heard of anybody who really died of laughter. For example, a person goes to a standup comedy and dies right after laughing at a joke. I don’t think that’s likely to happen.

For a while, I was a little obsessed with those retired people who make climbing Mount Everest their hobby and many die in the process. I read an article about a group of retirees from Japan who train to be mountain climbers and their ultimate goal is to get past the base camp at the foothill of Himalaya to climb up to the top. I somehow understand why these people want to do it, risking their life obviously. Instead of dying of illnesses and incapacity, they choose to freeze themselves into mummies at the highest peak of the world.

A while ago when N’s mother was first diagnosed with cancer, N told me that her mother was looking into a specially arranged trip to Switzerland where one travels in style and then dies there with many different burial options. That actually sounds quite good, I thought at the time, but N would not agree. She’s very religious and quite conservative, and anything remotely related with suicide will tick her off. She became an Independent when Democrats started to support LGBT.