Death By Natural Causes?

I'm not sure why I get preoccupied with the strangest concepts at times and this next one is no exception. It is to make a short story long: death.

When you begin to get a little older you start actually reading the obituaries more often. It's possibly a law similar to the law about moving to Florida as soon as the steering wheel on your car gets below eye level. That being said as time has moved on as it painfully wants to do, I've noticed one thing about obituaries that has been an outflow of our health care. We are the beneficiaries, especially in this country of medical advances galore. The drugs continue to multiply to treat a growing list of syndromes and diseases. While this is impressive in of itself, the fortunate or unfortunate fact is, depending upon your perspective, people are living longer. Many diseases that not many years ago were a death sentence are now not only survivable but curable!

I know what your starting to think. What in the world is his point and when will he get to it? I'm glad you asked. Here it is ; I challenge you to read the obituaries and find someone who actually has passed away due to natural causes. Our medical community in all it's triumphs has succeeded to make almost any death un-natural. Not long ago I read where a 94 year old man died from a heart attack. Would not this be considered death by natural causes? I sincerely hope I live to be 94 but I think I'll make a provision in my living will that if I have a heart attack at 94 years old I want it to be called death by natural causes!

I might be splitting hairs as I tend to like to do, in fact I can split a hair three ways sometimes, but in my way of thinking, unless it's a homicide or a car accident or a child , that in most cases death is a natural occurrence and should be considered as such. As a side note, the Christian part of me knows that death is not only a natural event but a necessary event in moving to our next state of everlasting life.

Death is a taboo topic most of the time but this spin is really in how it's described. All of us want to live as long as it is possible while still enjoying a decent quality of life but let's face the ultimate fact is that our bodies will shut down. We will move on to our next life where our bodies will be no longer needed. Where doctors won't be needed or medicine or coroners or any of the rest of it. So our deaths on this planet will, in most cases, not just be of natural causes but they should be hailed as finally reaching our most natural state of existence....eternal life!!