Week 5: Remembering What Was Lost

Death is scary.

Can we all agree on that?

True, human beings appear to have a strange fixation on the subject, what with the numerous slasher movies, half the stories on the news, murder mystery novels, and the way in which humans glorify dying for whatever we consider a “righteous” cause. But when we’re forced to put our own lives under the microscope, it’s often a very different story.

For all the dangers of the world, we find it difficult to imagine that death could ever reach our friends and family. It’s always the crazy, lone gunman, the reckless driver, the neighbor’s son – our children would never be so irresponsible to try such a thing. All the same, Chuck Palahniuk’s words ring true: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

This past fall marked the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, a time which forced every American to acknowledge not only that there are people out there who hate us, but also how vulnerable we really were. Yet it also made us realize the bravery and camaraderie our species can have in a time of great crisis.

Stories abound of courageous men and women, firefighters and citizens alike, who risked their lives to save others from the burning buildings and subsequent collapse, and I don’t feel like I would do them justice by even attempting to describe the scenes. Father Ted sent us a video about a man he knew at Boston College. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It’s just a glimpse at the amazing feats of humanity that came out of that horrible time in our history.

I hope I never find myself in such a situation. To be frank, I hope I never have to face death, period. Unlike most I’ve spoken with, I’d be perfectly fine with growing decrepit if it means I could live forever. But the questions in that video bring up a good point. What would my death look like? The way I see it, there are two schools of thought: the slow, calm slipping away, surrounded by loved ones, and the big, boisterous ending with a bang.

Me? I’m more inclined towards the former. Lying in a soft bed, with those I care about there to see me off, and one last opportunity to tell each of them how truly special they are to me. Then I would have a nice, modest funeral, with everyone sad for the loss, but happy in recounting my life. I’d get a paragraph (maybe even a whole page) in the family history logs, and whenever my great-grandchildren wanted to know the kind of man Papa McCormick was, my children or grandchildren would recount the stories with a tear in their eye and a smile in their heart.

And if another tragedy of such magnitude were to strike, and I found myself in the thick of it, I’d like to think that I would have the presence of mind and fighting spirit to be even half the hero that Welles Crowther was.

Imagine what they’d say about me then.