http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/07/lw.how.good.death/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
This is an article that everybody who will ever die needs to read.
Well, I don’t need to read it, but I read it anyways. 
djm
Haha!
When I thought I had cancer, I did a lot of inward searching and came to peace with dying. After that, life has been absolutely wonderful. It’s strange how accepting that you’re going to no longer exist makes existing now so much better. 
Gads no! I’m going to die posting on C&F?
With headphones on …wonder what I’ll be listenin’ too?
I guess I’m gonna die watching The Biggest Loser on Hulu and eating macaroni salad. 
Dime cómo mueres
Y te diré quién eres.
- Octavio Paz
Turns things around, doesn’t it?
Thanks, Jack. Good article. Mrs. Badger and I have been really conscious lately of the tendency to wish away time. You know, “Things will sure be good when this or that changes.” But if we can’t find the good here and now, what reason is there to expect it in some imagined future that doesn’t exist?
That said, I refuse to die doing grad work.
Tom
I dunno. It seems obvious to me.
This is the truest of true things.
You can be almost without-a-doubt sure that this or that will change…and you may prefer the new status…but it will
bring friends you didn’t invite.
Might as well just like what there is to like right now. Sometimes there is nothing better than fixing a cup of tea.
I’d like to die old, preferably after accomplishing something like making my 1000th flute. In bed, holding my wife’s hand. We’ll both go at the same time.
I want to retire early enough that I can see some things on my terms – go off with a tent, travel four hours a day, set up camp, drink tea and beer, eat, and play music at night, make shrimp hash and tea in the morning, and repeat for a couple of months each year. Spend a month at my brother’s, them a month at our house. That leaves about 8 months a year for flute making. It’s a pretty balanced old age.
Of course, I want to keep running till I die.
And sometimes there is.
Your wife doesn’t object to you making flutes in bed? 
djm
Perhaps “making flutes” is a euphemism for something else. 
Jack wrote:
This is an article that everybody who will ever die needs to read.
I was with ‘deej’ on this one, in that I didn’t need to read it, but read it anyway just to see why I need/i] to read it. My first hunch was right, I didn’t need to read it and like innocent bystander says, it seems obvious to me.
Anyway, if you are going to die, do it while doing the things that you want to do. Never get to the day where you have the realisation that you have not got enough time or good health left to do all those things you should have done when you had the time and good health.
I suspect I will die quickly and painfully, sometime between now and whenever. Therefore the healing of rifts or the seeking of closure is not something I prefer to put off. Be Prepared, I say.
Your wife doesn’t object to you making flutes in bed?
I thought the same thing myself deej, though it didn’t seem that unusual really to my warped sense of reality, it was just getting around the ‘holding my wife’s hand’ bit that conjured up a picture of chas whittling away one handed on his 1000th flute trying his best to finish it while his wife waited patiently for him.
Sorry chas, just having a laugh 
I fear you misunderstood me. I didn’t need to read it because I have no intentions of dying. You might point out that all that lives is born to die (Led Zeppelin) but then I would have to ask, “You call this living?”
I don’t have enough money to do any of the things I would like to do in this life. All the associated advice here so far seems to ring a bit hollow to me.
The other aspect I look at is that old saying of how only the good die young. If that’s true, I just can’t see myself croaking any time soon. 
djm
Of course, there was a hard stop (period) between flutes and bed.
True Story: A colleague of mine races cars. His first wife finally split from him when he had TWO engine blocks in the bedroom. One was okay, but two was crossing the line. There were also various crankshafts, cylinders, etc. all over the house.
Old moderaters never die: they’re just deleted.