Things one thinks about when about to die

[Banquo's Ghost]

This article in the Independent about the death of George Clooney's pet pig provoked both sympathy and reflection in me. I found the following anecdote very funny.

Occasionally, all that squealing can come in handy, like the early morning hours of 16 January 1994, when the Northridge earthquake shook most of Los Angeles, prompting shortlived but very real fears that the Big One had struck.

As Clooney recounted it: "Max was in bed with me and woke up minutes before it happened. And I was yelling at him for waking me up, when everything just exploded. So, I'm naked with Max, and running ... because I'm in a house on a hill, and if it's going down I want to be up on the street, dodging the next house.

"My buddy, who lives in the downstairs guesthouse, comes running up. And he's naked. With a gun, because he thought someone was breaking in. And I'm trying to write a note to my folks, trying to explain to them in case we die that it's not what it seems: two naked men, a gun and a pig."

I was interested to know if anyone has been in a situation where they considered they might die and found themselves trying to write a last note?

My closest experience (outside the normal fun of being shot at etc in the Army) was a plane crash. I was flying in part of the world notorious at the time for the poor state of maintenance of its air fleet and the severity of its winter weather. The pilot notified us that the undercarriage had frozen solid about thirty minutes before we were due to land and that a crash landing was inevitable.

I was on my own at the time, but with a very loved cat who had a pretty idiosyncratic personality. I found myself writing in my passport a long, detailed, and pretty weird note to my mother about how to deal with him and his peccadillos. A couple of other passengers noticed what I was up to and we soon had a big group of us all sketching notes to important people, sharing thoughts and ideas - took our minds off, I guess.

Clearly, most of us made it down alive, the fuel having been jettisoned and the frozen ground actually letting us slide through a long impact and get stopped relatively gently by loads of trees.

Still got that passport, and it makes me chuckle to remember what seemed to be important then.

[Dave1984]

Clearly, most of us made it down alive

Most?

[Vladimir]

Odd thing really, all that male nakedness. To answer your question: No . Writing a letter while in a sliding house, or partially submerged, seems a bit odd.

[Don Corleone]

I wrote a letter to my wife when going through some particularly bad turbulence flying to Singapore one time. I don't mean garden variety... some oxygen masks deployed at one point (though the crew were quick to jump on the horn and say the oxygen levels were fine, the masks released because of the pressure differential. I was trying to be cagey in my words, because I wasn't convinced I was going to die, it just struck me as a very real possiblity. What's more, i was writing it on my laptop so I figured there was small chance of it surviving without me. Now I make myself read it whenever my wife and I are in a 'brooding' phase during a fight. Usually solves that problem pretty damn quick.

[Aenlic]

Thanks to the usual American upbringing, I'd hear my mother's voice asking if I remembered to put on clean underwear with no holes.

[IrishArmenian]

I've thought about my family, my girlfriend, my favorite footballl clubs and who owes me money.