HOW WE CHOOSE THE TIME TO DIE

Pope Francis died at 7:35 a.m. on April 21st, 7 ½ hours after Easter Sunday. The pope had been in poor health for some time; his death was not unexpected. Yet in the days before his passing, he seemed to be rallying with several public events.

On Thursday he visited with dozens of inmates at Rome’s central prison where he washed the feet of 12 inmates. On Easter Sunday, he Met with vice President Vance and waved to the faithful driving through the throngs in his popemobile.

He seemed to be up and around and functioning, but early Monday morning he passed.

Was Francis’s death on the anniversary of Jesus’ death and resurrection a coincidence? I don’t think so. Nor was it an act of God. The pope’s death was not random. Consciously or subconsciously, he showed-up in St. Peter’s square for one last Easter Sunday mass. A fitting end for a life of faith.

Naturally I can’t prove this, but examples of this type of timely death have happened before.

When fifteen-year-old Felipe Garza, Jr., learned that fourteen-year-old Donna Ashlock needed a new heart, he declared, “I’m going to die, and I’m going to give my heart to my girlfriend.” Felipe seemed to be in perfect health, but a blood vessel burst in his head, and he died. The next day his heart was transplanted into Donna. Their age, size and blood type matched. That same week, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Melinda and Clarence Figal died within seven hours of each other. They had been married for 64 years. Their daughter said that it seemed as if “her mother had waited for her life-long friend to die and then quietly went to join him.”

Although these stories are anecdotal, there are enough of them to credibly claim that in the right circumstances, it’s possible to choose the time to die. Whether we are fifteen or eighty-seven, whether it be from fear, love, timing or self-sacrifice, the subconscious plays a part.

Sometimes the mind prolongs life to reach a watershed mark, like a birthday or anniversary. My mother died eleven days after her 90^th birthday. Charles Schultz died on the day his last Peanuts cartoon was published. He had been writing it for seventy years. It seems somehow fitting that Schultz and his alter ego, good ol’ Charlie Brown, expired on the same day.

Mark Twain was born the year Halley’s Comet appeared in 1835. Twain often commented he would go out with the comet; he did in 1910.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams’ last words were, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Back in Virginia, Jefferson’s last words were, "Is it the 4th?" After he heard, "Yes," he expired. At that moment he was aware of posterity, as well as the tidiness of dying on the anniversary of his greatest achievement. Death on that day would be, as the Indians used to say, “a good day to die.”

Elvis Presley, who had been devoted to his mother, died on August 16,1977, at age forty-two. His mother passed on August 14, 1958 at age forty-six. Calamity Jane died twenty-seven years to the day of Wild Bill Hickok’s death. Jane’s dying words were, “Bury me next to Bill.”

Budapest, Hungary had a large Jewish population in the nineteenth century; the death rate was highest in the months following the Jewish high holy days. In the United States, mortality increases notably after a national election, almost as if people are hanging on to learn the results.

Consciously chosen deaths are the most dramatic. Nursing home patient, Ed Lundberg, was forced to change wards. “If they move me I’m going to die,” he said. They moved him and he died. “This was home for him,” said the Nursing home administrator. “We were the only family he had…” Faced with the loss of his home and family, and completely helpless to do anything about it, Lundberg, “willed himself to die…”

In 1925, three-time presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, died the day after a public humiliation heard across the nation on a new marvel called “radio.” Unable to defend his beloved bible against famed attorney, Clarence Darrow, Bryan took a nap the next day and never woke up. He was sixty-five, his life was behind him. Not only had he been publicly humiliated, but he was unable to defend the center of his universe, the Holy Bible. There was nothing left to do but retreat into that good night.

Perhaps the most poignant example of self-induced death involves Liz, Eddie and Debbie. In the late fifties and early sixties this love triangle dominated the tabloids; they lifted tabloid celebrity to new heights, rivaling more recent scandal-level stories like Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Brad Pit and Angeline Jolie, Prince Charles, Diana and Camilla Bowles, along with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.

Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were the ultimate cute couple, young, attractive and talented. Married in 1955, they had two children, Todd and Carrie Fisher. Todd was named after their mutual friend, Mike Todd, who married Elizabeth Taylor two years later.

Eddie and Debbie were golden; they had it all; but sometimes golden isn’t enough. When celebrities become bigger than life, they lose their sense of proportion, they begin to act and feel like nothing is beyond them. They can do anything, influence everybody, have anything; they can have it all. For Eddie Fisher, having it all gave him license to have even more, most notably Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1957, when Taylor married theater and film producer, Mike Todd, Fisher was best man in the wedding, and Reynolds was the matron of honor. It was the third marriage for each. Taylor's went on to have a total of seven husbands. Eddie Fisher was her fourth.

When Liz Taylor stole Eddie from Debbie, it was a love triangle made in Tabloid Heaven. The public and the media were in agreement as to who was the villain. Debbie’s son, Todd Fisher, wrote about this in his memoir, My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie.

The world was stunned; Eddie and Elizabeth were vilified. Eddie was declared a philandering, opportunistic loser, and Elizabeth was labeled a bad-girl, home-wrecking [expletive]. Debbie, the good girl, the innocent, unsuspecting victim and single mom, was globally embraced with love and sympathy.

The dark-haired evil one broke up the family of the freshly pretty girl next door. As a result, Eddie Fisher’s career was ruined. Over. Gone.

There was outrage, my dad had like contracts canceled for morality clauses. It literally ruined his career. I mean, it just wiped him out. Liz kind of came out a little better, sort of unscathed.

Eddie, like so many of the rich and famous, struggled with drugs and gambling. He filled up his days (and nights) with numerous affairs including Ann-Margaret, Juliet Prowse, Stephanie Powers, Sue Lyons, Edie Adams, Judith Cambell, and Mia Farrow. His two-year marriage to Connie Stevens, produced two daughters.

In 1977, Eddie and Debbie’s daughter, Carrie Fisher appeared as Princess Leia, in the first of four Star Wars movies. Who could forget the sleek and scantily clad Princess Leia, chained to the protoplasmic blob, Jabba The Hut? Carrie was married to Paul Simon from 1983 to 1984 and though they had an erratic relationship for several more years, they never remarried.

At the age of 60 in 2015, Carrie Fisher had a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. She died four days later. Autopsies revealed the presence of cocaine, traces of heroin, and other opiates. Carrie’s daughter stated that her mother "battled drug addiction and mental illness her entire life. She ultimately died of it.”

At one point, Carrie Fisher tried to distance herself from Debbie, barely speaking to her mother for nearly a decade. “It’s very hard when your child doesn’t want to talk to you and you want to talk to them, and you want to touch them, you want to hold them,” Reynolds said. “It was a total estrangement.”

The dizzying profusion of marriages, divorces, infidelity and substance abuse is an all-to-common tragedy among the rich and bored, who pass along broken lives to their children.

So - What does all this have to do with choosing the time to die?

Just this.

The day after Carrie’s death, Debbie Reynold died at the age of 84.

"She went to be with Carrie,” her son Todd Fisher said.

In fact, those were the last words she spoke this morning. She didn't die of a broken heart. She just left to be with Carrie...She simply said that she didn't get to see Carrie come back from London. She expressed how much she loved my sister. She then said she really wanted to be with Carrie, in those precise words, and within 15 minutes from that conversation, she faded out. Within 30 minutes, she technically was gone.

She started to have a stroke, and she just effectively went to sleep and didn't wake up. She closed her eyes, peacefully like you're going to sleep, and she literally went to sleep and left. My mother, if anybody, had somehow a way to do that, and I watched it happen in front of my face, I was on her bed with her, and I watched her leave and go to Carrie."

We die when we have nothing left to do. We die to escape. We die from boredom, failure, humiliation, broken hearts, loneliness, and helplessness. In the case of Felipe Garza Jr., and Debbie Reynolds, we can die from love. Pope Francis also died from love, choosing to ascend to Heaven at the same time as his savior.