On Going Out Like You Mean It
What did Vikings, samurai, and Amy Winehouse have in common? None of them had any intention of collecting a pension. Dying quietly in a state-approved bed after a long managed decline simply wasn’t on the table. You either went out loud and swinging—brave and full of noise, fighting whatever armies of evil had shown up that season—or you went young and comprehensively wrecked, somewhere between the last high and the absolute bottom of yourself.
There’s something to that. How you die becomes part of how people remember you. Not the dominant part—hopefully—but it’s there, woven into every retelling of your name. Every time someone thinks of you, that final story surfaces too. And not all exits are equal.
Some deaths are just pathetic. Slipping in the bathroom and impaling yourself on your own toothbrush. Going down as a statistical body count in a media-manufactured pandemic. Bleeding out on a cosmetic surgeon’s table because you wanted a minor adjustment. These are the deaths that make the person telling the story suppress a laugh. The tragedy and the absurdity have fused into each other and won’t come apart.
Then there are the heroic exits. Pulling thirty-five orphans out of a burning hot air balloon and steering the flaming wreck directly into a camouflaged enemy aircraft carrier. Dying mid-grin during a thirteen-way with the Swedish women’s beach volleyball team and their younger sisters—having set several records that will never appear in any official ledger. Running toward a horde of zombies with a bomb under your arm to save a mother and her child—actually, that was a film. Doesn’t matter.
Context matters as much as manner. A welfare case dissolving on a train station toilet over a bad batch—just depressing. A celebrated rock star going out on an overdose in the presidential suite of a five-star hotel—at least there’s some tragic grandeur in it, one last gesture toward the myth. A confused old man toppling over in a nursing home visiting room—horrible. That same man watching the sun go down over his favorite lake, falling asleep with a genuine smile on his face—almost beautiful. Actually enviable.
Most of us will die in a car accident, a cardiac event, or something slow and cellular that takes its time. Assuming the next world war keeps rescheduling. None of that is especially remarkable or embarrassing—unless someone photographs it and posts it somewhere. What matters in those final seconds, supposedly, is what plays back. And what you want on that reel is good material. Not a highlights package assembled for other people—just enough moments that were genuinely extraordinary, specifically for you.
The number of those moments is the only figure worth tracking. The exit itself is almost never up to you anyway. The accumulation of things that made you feel alive and specific—that’s the story you were writing all along. How you die is a footnote. Everything before it is the book.