I don’t think that a single day has passed since my adolescence that I haven’t thought about death, my own death. Mortality has been a reality of life for me since my father killed himself in a drunken automobile crash when I was five years old. In my pre-adolescent years, I was convinced I would die before I turned 22; I’m forty-five years beyond that limit and death is a closer probability now than it has ever been.

Sometimes when I think about my death, I consider what it would be to die by accidental means. This is why I service my vehicle before long road trips, making sure the tires get rotated and properly inflated, having my service garage do its “88 point safety check” and change the oil, and making sure the safety box of road flares, bottled water, and space blankets is filled. This is why I stay behind guard rails at the Grand Canyon and Cliffs of Moher, and why at Dún Aonghasa on Inismór where there are no guards I stayed well back from the edge.

Other times when I consider my death, I contemplate disease and medical mishap. Though often remarked as outwardly very calm when being prepped for surgery, I am genuinely terrified every time. I am always convinced that I will not wake up. When there was difficulty with anesthesia before my first knee replacement operation (they had to make four attempts before succeeding with the spinal block), I nearly called it off, sure that the problem meant I would die while unconscious. I recently had a colonoscopy and as I drifted off my last thought was that the drug being used, Propofol, was the same drug used for execution by lethal injection: “What if the nurse had mixed up on the protocols and used that dosage by mistake?” Less dramatically, every time I have a respiratory infection with chest congestion, I know I’m going to cough to death!

And then there are those moments when I think about taking affirmative action to end my life by my own hand. They are fairly frequent. Poison, hanging, handgun, swimming out into Lake Erie so far I can’t make it back, suicide by cop (which I could never do because it requires violence towards others and I’m just not a violent person). I had never seen the movie “Red” until recently when it was on one of the streaming internet services; at the beginning of the movie one of the characters avoids criminal prosecution for espionage (anyway, I think that’s the reason) by stepping into the path of a speeding freight truck. Now that would be an interesting way to do it! Who would know it wasn’t accidental? (Everyone now, I suppose.)

My late brother (who died from brain cancer like Sen. John McCain) and I shared a fear of heights. One day over cocktails we discussed that, and he confessed that he had come to believe that his fear was not of falling, but rather of jumping. I’m not sure about my own fear of heights. I think it’s a bit weird that I don’t fear flying but I am absolutely freaked out when I have to cross a bridge; the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan completely terrifies me. Perhaps it’s because airplanes are enclosed.

I often wonder, however death may come, what my last thoughts will be. That’s on my mind today because yesterday I heard a news report about the mass execution of criminals and dissidents in Saudi Arabia by beheading. I was in my car driving somewhere and as I listened to the report it occurred to me that for some seconds following the severing of the head the brain, eyes, and ears must surely continue to function. What would be the perceptions coming to the person? This train of thought was simply so terrifying that I had to pull over and stop driving for a while. I do believe that of all the methods of execution human beings have devised, beheading may be the most barbaric.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone dying of suicide by beheading.