Please Don't Ever Say "Untimely Death"
Every once in awhile there are things that just make me say, “What? That makes no sense.” Most of the time they’re just little phrases that people use without thinking about it.
Today I will attack this phrase: untimely death.
In late February a colleague of mine covering the Notre Dame hockey team died. He was 43. Like a lot of unexpected deaths, one day he was there and the next he simply wasn’t.
Since then a lot of people have called his death “untimely.” On the surface this makes sense, but it really doesn’t.
Here’s the thing. Did this colleague have a lot of life left to live? Yes. Did he die too young? Yes. Was it an unexpected, unforseen death? Yes. Was it a terrible loss? Yes.
Was it untimely? Hell if I know.
Death just happens. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, but it will happen to all of us (unless we’re Dick Clark).
Whether it is untimely or not isn’t for us to know. I can’t think of anyone I’ve known who has died where people said “Well that was just a perfectly timed death. He could not have died at a better time.”
So it sounds to me like every death is untimely to someone. If that’s the case, why do we see the need to say it out loud? It’s just a given. Death isn’t cool. There’s no good “time” for it.
In other news, I have way too much time to think about these kind of things.
