Getting the last word.

It’s a wonderful feeling, to get the last word. Know you got to express what you wanted, and they don’t have the ability to continue the argument. Settle your score without the game continuing; really, getting the last word is ending the game.

One guy though, he got the last word in a game you can’t really win. A game against Death, the ultimate victor. He always wins. It sucks, but he does. He doesn’t even have to say anything to get the last word. He just ends everyone’s choice of having one. That’s life, I guess.

So I found this article on Thought Catalog on the front page and it’s a pretty surreal topic. This man from British Colombia wrote his own obituary before he died in preparation for when his terminal cancer—Death, really, in one of his most sadistic forms you’d have to admit—ultimately silences him.

So, with the pre-written statement, after he passed his family released it to Thought Catalog and it shows up in the front page. I read it once, and I have to admit, I wasn’t totally immersed in the nature of the story. Dead man writes from the dead. Interesting, yeah. I’ll give you a moment to read it, then I’ll give me two cents.

I always liked to think of Death as a personified presence, just because it’s cooler to think of intangible aspects of reality as tangible. Grim Reaper is a much sweeter thing to completely fear than a simple inevitable truth about the universe. No scythe, no cloak; no fun. This is quite a digression from the said article, but I think it’s interesting to think of this man facing Death with his faceless face (I guess), and taking advantage of what little he has left to flip the finger.

Maybe the intentions were much less hostile, but I think the respect I get from this technical writer writing about something the complete opposite of technical is that he had the mindset to take control of his life—when Death is dragging him slowly down, and make use of what he has left.

What he says in that ‘Last Post’ really isn’t for the readers, I believe. It’s first and foremost, for his family, and doubly as a confrontation against Death and his machinations. Epic? Yes. No doubt we all take for granted pretty much absolutely everything we own, do, have, think, and believe—and how many of us get to sit down and reminisce about it, lucidly, without Death leering over our shoulders telling us to give in, shut up, and come with him into oblivion?

Not a rhetorical question, I really do wonder it. I wonder if I’ll have that gracious opportunity. If Death is so kind to allow me to think and feel for everything I experienced before dragging me off with the blade of his scythe.

This guy? He slapped that scythe away. Because words, unlike body, are untouchable (not in a literal sense, I’ll admit). But his words came across before Death dragged him off—their meaning was immediate, their audience waiting to catch those words as soon as the body fell with Death.

He got the last word. He published it onto the Internet for others to see. And Death is reeling on his throne of bones and dust, grabbing at the Earth-realm with resent. The inescapable, intangible, fearsome presence of a universal force, and this man laughed silently to himself as Death swept him away. His loved ones looked on with hope and purpose. At that moment, nothing could stop the last play against Death’s game.

And you know what? He won. That’s why its a great story. He beat Death. He got the last word. Who doesn’t want to beat the quintessential unbeatable figure?

I may be being extremely existentialist, but whatever. I’m thinking as I’m writing. That’s what stimulated my brain with this article. Interesting—definitely heart-warming, uplifting and saddening when reading the Last Post, but it’s afterwards that I dig deep into some juicy thoughts that I start to have some fun.

I just cataloged my thoughts. How cute.