It’s not often that people get their wishes in life, however both of my parents got their wishes when it came to their deaths. My dad was diagnosed with adult onset progressive muscular dystrophy at age 36. I’m not sure what they thought at the time. It wasn’t anything receiving a death sentence as with some serious diseases. Daddy would go on working as a tool and die maker at a General Electric facility in Cincinnati, until after his father died in a car wreck the day before Christmas in 1973.
At that point my dad took early retirement – he’d been with the company since his graduation from high school in 1938 – and opened his own tool and die manufacturing business. He grew that business from himself and one assistant machinist started in a renovated barn on our farm in Bullittsville, Kentucky, to more than 65 people in 60,000 square feet of manufacturing space in an industrial park in Hebron, Kentucky. He loved his work and the idea that he was his own boss.
He did all of this in spite of the fact that his physical condition was worsening. He’d been diagnosed with adult-onset muscular dystrophy at age 36, and yet continued working. When he was in his 60s he bought an electric scooter on which he rode around the shop, talking to the employees and enjoying the success Anderson Tool & Die was having during that period. My two younger brothers joined the business in the late 1980s and learned the business.
My mother was my father’s caretaker as his condition worsened. Still, he went into the business every day. However, he worried that he might outlive my mother and would have no one to care for him. Given that both sides of my family were extremely long-lived, he knew there was a possibility that he might outlive her – even though her side of the family lived long and healthy lives. He often expressed his wish to “go before” my mother.
In February 2002, he and my mother were driving home on a Saturday afternoon after going out to lunch, when an oncoming vehicle traveling too fast on rain-slick roads skidded out of control and hit them. My mother was unhurt, and for a few days it was thought that my father was not hurt badly as there were no visible signs of injuries. However, a few days later he died of sepsis from a tear in his intestines. The seat belt that was holding my father and the electric cart he sat on in the passenger side of their van in place had torn his gut when the cart lurched forward.
When I got the word that my father had died, I was overcome with thankfulness that he’d gotten his wish. There was, obviously, some sorrow that tugged at my heart. He and I were close and often talked business, as I had a career in writing about manufacturing for industrial publications. The joy I felt at the fact that he’d gotten his wish to die before my mother overcame the sorrow I felt knowing that I’d miss our conversations.
When death comes to someone in the right time and the right way – as it usually does – there is no “sting” of sorrow. People often speak of those who died as having an “untimely” death, feeling that there is no right time for a person to die. But that is just ego talking. Death is certain. The time of our death is uncertain but we can be sure that it is always the right time.
Death awareness should always be present with us. “Today is a good day to die,” said the old Indian chief in the movie Little Big Man, meaning “I am ready for what ever comes.”
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