One foot in the grave: When it’s your turn to go, you got to go

Back when I was a young man, just a boy really, I was terrified of getting on an airplane. I still don’t like flying, but who does? There is nothing natural about cramming people into a metal tube and then sending said tube 600 mph at 30,000 feet. And that’s after strangers rummage through your luggage and your dignity is destroyed by standing in long lines and being poked and prodded in security.

Still beats walking though.

When it was time to board my first cross-country flight, my parents sat me down and tried to assure me that everything would be OK; that statistically speaking, flying is safer than riding in an automobile; and lastly, I should never fear death, because the good Lord wasn’t going to call me home until it was my turn.

I wasn’t worried about my time to go, the young me quipped, I was more concerned about if it was somebody else’s. Surviving a plane crash seems worse than dying in one.

You often hear people use phrases like “halfway dead,” or “near death.” Those colloquialisms, when you think about it, don’t really make sense, because we’re always a hair breadth away from dying and you never know when your number is going to come up. My paternal grandmother, when asked how she was doing, always said she had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Truer words are hardly ever spoken.

Famed Greek playwright Aeschylus died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. The wordsmith, considered the founder of tragedy, stared death in the face numerous times in his life. He survived the Battle of Marathon, helping drive the Persian invaders from Athens. Later he was accused of spilling the secrets of a cult he belonged to on stage and escaped the clutches of an angry, bloodthirsty mob.

This guy was like a cat with nine lives. He surely didn’t expect to go by wayward airborne reptile. Something’s going to kill you, am I right?

I recently read a report outlining a new study showing the dangers of sitting down. Sitting for 30 minutes at a time, apparently, is just as bad for our collective health as smoking used to be. It has taken me about 45 minutes to string these words together, so now I’m at a higher risk of cancer. I hope it hasn’t taken you that long to read it. If so, get up and walk around a little bit.

If you focus on death, you’ll quickly consume your life with worry. If you start looking for ways to die, you will find many. Dying is easy. It’s the living that gets hard sometimes.

Next time you find yourself scared of dying, just remember we all have one foot on a banana peel and that we’re not going to go until it’s our time to go. But look out for falling turtles.