What A Way To Go

In 1776, when Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase "all men are created equal," he wisely made no mention of how all of us might come to an end. That's because there's no way of knowing, a fact I find annoying since we are all born exactly the same way, and yet we die in drastically different ways. Would it have been so hard for God to pin that one down?

What's got me on this is reading about a 54-year-old woman who was out doing her gardening and got swallowed whole by a giant python. Okay, calm down -- it happened in Indonesia so if you're reading this in America you're pretty safe, at least one would imagine. When her family noticed her absence and went looking for her they came upon her gardening tools and nothing else. Then, about 50 feet away they spotted the python with a bloated belly. Putting two and two together, somebody killed the snake and looked inside and voila! -- there she was, still fully dressed but of course dead.

This gruesome manner of leaving seems unfair when compared with all those people who pass away painlessly in their sleep, or on a morphine drip surrounded by their loving family and friends. It's bad enough that life sucks for so many people and is great for so many others, but does death also have to be so undemocratic? I hate that.