How do you want to die?

The title says it all. And now I've gotten your attention.

Let's make this blog a little interesting.

If one were given a chance to choose how to exit this world, of course, the sane ones would always want to go painlessly. But that's not the fair game of this universe. How and when to die...have you ever thought about it?

1. While you're fast asleep, you suddenly wake up in the middle of the night trapped in your room watching flames ablaze right outside your door. Your windows are locked and you have no way out. Your drapes have been caught in flames and the ceiling is about to collapse. You're suffocating and you're pissing and farting right in the middle of the flames. A wooden beam that's ablaze falls on you. You touch the window pane but it's scalding. Then you're suffocating. You can't breath. There's smoke around you and in your lungs and it feels like someone is squeezing your neck. Your body is hot and you can see your skin burning and you can feel the scalding fire on your body and you're losing consciousness but you can feel you're being charred...slowly...it will be over soon...you drift away...tomorrow, you will be just another statistic...charred, unrecognized, dead.

2. There's the slow painful way of exiting. Coming down with cancer. Treatment modalities and choices are expensive. Depending on the cancer type, there is chemotherapy, surgery or radiotherapy. Depending on the stage of the disease, there is a time frame. But one thing for sure, you get to prepare the way to go.

3. Or would you want to get trapped in a war zone? Enjoying your vacation, suddenly your group gets kidnapped and you're made to undergo torture, humiliation, rape, starvation...you sleep in the open air, get dragged from outhouse to camps to forests...you are constantly blindfolded and all you hear are the voices of your captors who are demanding ransom money from your family. You hear the kidnapper screaming because your family doesn't want to part with the cash you've saved then BANG. Silence...at first it was a painful dull feeling...now you don't feel anything...just slumping to the ground...what would you feel now that all your brains are splattered all over the dirty grass in the forest?

4. It was meant to be a business trip. But the pilot had informed everyone on the flight that the air traffic controllers are late and that since no one was in to take the call, the plane you're in has been circling the airport for the last 30 minutes. After almost 10 minutes more, the pilot announces that the plane is now ready to land. On your comfortable first class window seat you see another plane head right towards yours and in 5...4...3...2...1...there's a swerve and then BLAM...

5. Family vacation and you're cruising along SLEX in your hot new Volvo S60 which you plan to show off to your in-laws. The kids are jumping up and down at the back, your wife is talking about getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks in gas station and you join her suggestion. You're in the middle lane and the gas station is just on the right side, you swerve, salivating for that hot cup of coffee, when suddenly a bus is gunning right towards your car. At the blind spot of your eye you see it coming, but it's too late, you swerve, it slams, in 5 seconds you see your children fly out of the car, you run over the youngest and your wife is hurled 30 feet into the hood of the bus and all is a blur...all for a cup of coffee...the car skids and because of the impact it drags your car a few more feet right into a parked ten wheeler and SLAM...there is simply darkness...

6. It was a good month. You hit the sales quota and you just got a 6 digit bonus! You were going to celebrate with your friends. You needed to just pass the ATM machine to get a little cash and while withdrawing someone points a rusty knife at your back. The guy is scrawny and dirty and has wide eyes and red shot! The ATM hurls the money out, P5,000 - the scrawny thief grabs it, you flinch, he doesn't like it and stabs you 40 times right on the spot...was it worth it?

7. You like playing golf. It's a great game and you're on the 13th hole in the posh golf club. Suddenly the sky is dark and lightning just hits you right there sending over 1 million volts of electricity, targeting the golf club you're holding.

8. Health buff and you're on the treadmill. You see the other people around you full of flab, huffing and puffing away and you're proud of your body. You look at yourself on the mirror while jogging and appreciate the work in progress. Suddenly there is chest pain and you cringe and grab the handle of the treadmill but the pain seems to worsen and while you attempt to press the button stop, you lose consciousness, you lose your balance, slip hit your head against the running tread. You had an MI (heart attack), and a massive one. Someone is pressing your chest and you can feel the pressure, but you can only see darkness...then silence...

There are many ways we can go.

I specifically wrote this blog, not for the gory details of death, but to reinforce the fact that the only thing predictable in our future is the certainty of death. No tarot card, no feng shui, and no wizardry called horoscope will change that fact. Only God knows when it is time.

Are you ready anytime?