How I Would Die

In the wonderful X-Files Season 3 episode Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose written by Darin Morgan, Peter Boyle plays an unwilling clairvoyant whose powers are limited to seeing how a person would die. Fittingly, he works as a life insurance salesman. This episode is memorable for hundreds of things, but the best ones that come to mind are when Clyde predicts that Mulder would die of autoerotic asphyxiation, and when he predicts that Scully won’t die, ever. I’ve just been pondering on my own mortality these past few weeks. Ten years ago I wanted to die in a superheroic way, sort of like blocking a disintegrating beam from hitting someone I care for. I still want to die that way, but now that I have a wider perspective, I know that dying from, say, COPD or cancer are now more probable. In any case I want Tori Amos’ 1,000 Oceans playing in my funeral.


June 2007