I haunt Twitter in my spare time these days like the ghost of procrastinating writers, and something I’ve noticed that pops up every few days or so is a tweet about people on their deathbeds.
I bet deathbed research is skewed.
For one, who is affording death beds and living to be an old age in the United States? That’s right: complainers.
The other day I took down a piece of chicken a little too hard, and it was in my windpipe, and if you ran up to me in that moment and shouted, “What do you regret?” I would have said (had I not been choking), nothing! I don’t even regret not chewing this chicken properly! You know why? Because now I’m rapidly dying and I don’t have time to sit around and complain about crap. I back every decision I made!
Of course, had I really been about to die, I would have just died silently, so you couldn’t get all this good info down for the death bed research.
I always think (when I’m choking) about my grandfather, who died of choking. First I think: oh shit, this is genetic. After I don’t die of choking, I wonder: if he had a death bed, would he have expressed regrets about abandoning his family in the projects and moving overseas to eventually die of steak in Taiwan with a beautiful Russian woman and no contact with all his children? The nice thing about getting murdered by steak is that you don’t have all that thinking time at the end of your life. Which I believe is what leads to the regret. You don’t hear skydivers and base jumpers and mountain climbers expressing a lot of death bed regret, right?
That’s the other thing about the death bed research: these people are dying and yet people are still hanging around them even though they have the stench of death on them. Maybe there’s an ulterior motive: to write a book, e.g., a Tuesdays with Morrie situation, or some other parasitic reason: the will, maybe, or you want some time to shake them and shout tell me where the gold is buried, in case it’s a pirate.
I got this far in my thoughts about conducting surveys with dying people when I ran out of steam, so I decided to click on the tweeted link, and it was broken. So now I’ll never know what those dead people regretted. But I stand by everything I said about it even though now I’m not exactly sure what they said.
Anyway, I guess I’ll go work on my novels now. Good luck staying off your death beds.
I’ve never been fond of steak. For the first time ever I feel confident of my decision. Thanks Jessica (feeling boosted).
🤓
I like it, but I’ll never trust it…go forth with full confidence!
Here’s a crazy coincidence-I came to your site to look up the blog you did on Henry Loos and then saw this link.
I mean, I totally agree; and as it turns out, my grandfather also died of choking. Chicken salad sandwich.
And as for deathbeds, I have a sister who’s been complaining for years that she’s always on her deathbed and nobody comes to see her. I had been telling her to just throw that deathbed out and just buy a newer nicer bed that’s NOT a deathbed. XP. I mean, why would you continue to sleep on it?? 😀
I wonder if there’s a correlation between people who are interested in Loos and those who have grandfathers who ate at a risky speed?
You’d never expect that from a chicken salad sandwich, they don’t seem deadly…I ought to write a blog on foods that kill people. I wonder if chicken salad sandwich is a mass murderer?
Is your sister trying to get death guests? 😂 If you’re on your deathbed but you don’t die, then it’s just a bed-
I should let her know.
It’s sort of like my ex’s mother, who has Crohn’s disease, and has been telling everyone for years- since I met her 25 years ago, that SHE COULD DIE FROM IT AT ANY TIME> and although I realize Crohn’s is serious and no laughing matter, the fact that she’s also a master manipulator and pathological liar (although her Crohn’s is real, she uses this as an excuse to get the best service and instant service for free, and thinks it entitles her to all kinds of special service and considerations), made me find it superiorly ironic that her boyfriend instead died suddenly of a heart attack with no previous symptoms (He was a wonderful guy, though.) And she is still alive. She had been getting some social security while living with him. After he died, she told social security that, they had, in fact been living together long enough to be common law married and she should receive his social security benefits. They came back with the fact that she had never reported his income at all (he was making a lot of money) and so she needed, instead, to repay all the money they had paid to her.
He actually died of a heart attack after a hearty breakfast of eggs and a lot of pop. I have my own theories about that though. I think pop kills people and also at least really cold drinks combined with greasy meals. I’ll explain that in a blog one day.
and my sister, just, the way she says “I’ve been on my deathbed”, still makes me laugh, only because she’s an extreme hypochondriac and nothings is ever as bad as she makes it out to be. I mean, obviously she lived through all that.
If you let her know, report back! To me, the most interesting features of psychosomatic narcissism are:
1. Using illnesses to seek attention (instead of writing blogs and novels, and creating a website about it, and trying to get attention that way, but I understand this isn’t for everybody!), and
2. The claim that, because one has a particular illness or diagnosis, that one’s death is more imminent than anybody else’s, when in fact, the time you die can be an interesting surprise that happens just whenever, a la steak or chicken salad sandwich-