Death Styles

(3)

Natural Scum.

Which brings us to the idea of 'death styles.' Do we all die in style? Are there actually 'styles of dying?' Fetuses, for example, die in fairly like manner whether aborted by man or god. Children usually die in like manner from various diseases. Most adults die in well defined categories, one of the most populous being warfare. Older adults usually die of disease and the older the adult the more definitive the disease.

From this it would seem that there are indeed 'death styles' and that most of us follow those various death styles, falling into some category or other, eventually. You will die, but will you do it in style? That is the question.

It seems to me that if there are indeed various styles of dying that one of the most interesting such styles must be suicide. I think you will agree with me on this. Everybody dies. Some of us manage to die gloriously if not beautifully. Unfortunately most of us die ignomineously. We die ugly. Some few of us die extremely uglilly. Terry Schiavo is an example of somebody who has been dying for a long ugly time.

We say that one of the most beautiful ways to die is in battle. Maybe. But remember that the average soldier who died in battle did it inadvertently. His death was a by-product. And it was probably very ugly. There is little beauty in death (tap) but there is some: death is the natural culmination of a beautiful sequence. As such it is beautiful. In fact every death is beautiful.