A Brush with Death
i believe that changing the way you
brush your teeth
can change your life no i’m not a
dentist
as you said i’m a deaf and dying
educator
i encourage people to think about all of
their options
and come up with a plan that plan is a
gift for their family
when their family wishes they were there
most now a lot of you probably don’t
think about death and you’d prefer not
to
some of you actually probably think by
talking about death it’ll come to you
sooner
but i’m here to tell you that talking
about death won’t kill you
most of you have no idea how you’re
going to die or when
and there are some really odd ways to
die
let me show you a couple doozies from
history
a vat of beer collapsed and when it
collapsed
it resulted in a chain reaction of all
of the other vats of beer around it
which resulted in hundreds of thousands
of gallons of beer
spilling out into the streets of london
it even had a
15 foot high wave as it escaped from the
building
eight people died oddly
five of them were out of weight when it
happened
about a hundred years later was the
great molasses
flood residents in boston felt the earth
shake as a vessel burst and poured out
2.3 million gallons
of molasses into the streets of boston
yet again oddly was a 15 foot tall wave
and this time it went 35 miles an hour
through the streets
molasses 35 miles an hour
it killed 21 people
now i doubt any of you think you’re
going to get hit by a giant wave and die
but you might think it’s possible
that you could get hit by a bus
so knowing that knowing that you’re
going to die
i would encourage you to accept that
and come to terms with it because
if you chain if you do that it can
change you
when i was in my 20s i had an experience
like this
and it changed me i came in contact with
a deadly virus
and all of the doctors were convinced
that i should have that virus
so i went through the tests first test
was surprisingly negative
second test negative third test
negative the doctors were shocked they
were incredulous they had no idea how
this was possible
so here i am though many tests later
years later and still am free
but that close call changed my life
i thought about my priorities i got a
new mission in life
i made promises to myself promises i
kept
so when thinking about this imagine
if you decided what would happen and be
thinking about
when you might die you might feel like
you’ve got decades
of life left right and i hope you do
and imagine if you really use that time
i mean really used it
because the truth is you will die
i’d like for you to think about it this
way i want us to come a little bit more
in touch with that
it’s something we all know is true like
sarah mentioned but we tend to not want
to think about it
so now i want you to say to yourself
i am going to die
with me i am going
to die let’s do it again i
am going to die now
as a lively death lady i tend to be all
about humor and jokes
but right now i want to encourage you to
take a deep breath
and with all seriousness hand on your
chest
come with me i am going
to die good job
knowing that you can move forward
and live a different sort of life
you can also remind yourself that every
day
you are live it is a graceful wonderful
thing
and if you accept that and you decide to
really use that time
your life will be different i bet you
some of you out there have a bucket list
do any of you have a bucket list
fabulous
so a bucket list is a list of things you
hope to do before you die
i would like for us to think about those
bucket lists and how we can make them be
even better
so an example of a bucket list is i want
to be a millionaire before i die
or before i die i want to travel the
world these are big
lofty huge goals right
so we can look at them differently i’d
like to shift it first this way
instead of i want to do this let’s shift
it
i will do this so i will travel the
world
i will be a millionaire heck those are
still pretty big goals
so if we narrow it down even a little
bit more how about this
i will start my own business
and create an opportunity to make money
or i will travel to brazil
these are sort of like steps to the big
goals
but it’s even better to get more broad
and bring it back down into specifics
let’s just get rid of the before i die
parsed as well
so then it becomes i will
go to rio de janeiro for carnival with
sue
next year or it turns into
i will start my business by getting a
business plan together and a solid
network by may
do you see the difference it takes the
ideas out of the dream realm in the
clouds
and brings them into a more tangible
reality
what do you want to do everybody’s
bucket list is a little bit different
right but oftentimes they focus around
travel
experiences challenges and community
services
for my bucket list i believe and check
it out
every year so i open it up in january i
take a moment and i pick one or two
things
i put together a plan i try to figure
out how i’m going to work that
for the next year this year i’m going to
alaska
it’ll be my 50th state in my 50th year
but i didn’t get to 50 as far as the
states
by just hoping it would happen i had to
make step by step to step to get to 50.
stephen king has a great quote which i
like a lot it says
you needn’t die happy when your time
comes
but you must die satisfied that you
lived your life
fully from beginning to end now he talks
about death a lot so i’ll give him some
kudos on that
the reality is some people it’s harder
institutionalized challenges do make it
quite challenging for people to
live up to these ideas and goals
sometimes big
massive dreams can be restrictive but
even more so
if you can’t see an option in front of
you or even if you do see the option but
you feel you can’t get there
it’s hard this isn’t something that
everyone has the privilege to be able to
do
currently you have the privilege of
being alive and one of the ways that we
can help
is let those that might have privileges
that stop or impede them
to be able to live their goals and
dreams so if you’re up here
lend a hand the goal of course is to
shift our dreams and fantasies and bring
them into reality
now when i think about things i try to
think of things from a positive
perspective
of what we want rather than what i don’t
want what i need to do
rather than what i don’t need to do at
the same
time you just don’t always have that
idea and information
so every once when you have to look at
your life and figure out
what isn’t working what is getting in
the way of you living
your true life we have to shift at this
point in time
from a bucket list to a [ __ ] list
not that kind of [ __ ] list
[Laughter]
[Applause]
for this we have to look at the things
that get in our way
write the things that mad in our mind
the things that make us angry the things
that distract us and confuse us and just
get
in the way you know these things right
i know that for myself one of the ones
that was constantly annoying me is that
every time i would go to my closet in
the morning
it was packed full of clothes i didn’t
like or they didn’t fit
or they just didn’t they weren’t good
for my daily activity
like really did i need a costume into my
closet
so it made me so frustrated
it made me either feel fat but often
times it also made me feel
late because i was still trying to
figure out what to get out of my closet
so one morning i said [ __ ] it
and i dove in i cold that closet i got
rid of everything i didn’t like and only
things that were remaining were the
things that fit
and make me feel fabulous my mornings
are
so much easier now now that’s just a
trivial little thing it wouldn’t seem
like that big of a deal
but science has realized that really
those small annoyances and those little
irritations
do impact our cognitive function
so while we’ve been talking about that
part i bet you there’s something that’s
been going on your head
something that does drive you a little
crazy and maddens you a bit
matter of fact it probably made you feel
a little gross just thinking about it
one of my friends said it feels like
nickelodeon slime was all over her
what could you say [ __ ] it too or at
least
minimize its impact in your life
i want to remind you that death is
100 going to happen and life
is unreliable we never know when things
might change
remember one in four of us don’t make it
to 65.
we think that death is something that
only waits for the elderly
but it could happen to any one of us
remember there’s always the bus
so i want you to consider this
there’s not that many evenings left how
many weekends do you have
and more importantly how many summers
will you get to experience
i encourage you to live your life as
fully as possible
and to feel each day as being alive
one of the easiest ways to do that is
yes where we started
brushing your teeth
every morning i want you to take a
moment when you grab that toothbrush
and think for yourself someday i will
die
i have challenges in life but today
i am alive and then i want you to look
into that mirror
and ask yourself what am i going to do
today
to fully live
i want you to take a brush with death
[Applause]
thanks