The day Princess Diana’s car collided in that Paris tunnel in 1997, the world winced at the brutal harshness of an untimely death. There, in full bloom, was this woman, this young, beautiful one, felled in the space of a heartbeat. Many can’t believe that the clock on her had already rung its final—her departure was already scheduled for that time, to that location, and for that reason.
We like to hold on to the idea of “dying before one’s time” because it makes us feel secure. It allows us to fantasize about a different ending where the individual lived longer if only the accident had not happened or the illness could have been avoided. Life is not a “choose-your-own-adventure” novel whereby we can rewrite the pages ourselves. The time of death is in the script we never have a chance to read beforehand, and no hindsight can rework it. Even when catastrophe hits us off guard, the fact is unyielding—it was supposed to occur at that exact time and that exact place.
There are many examples throughout history that challenge our perception of timing. John F. Kennedy’s shooting in Dallas in 1963, for example, was sudden and seemingly untimely. But his death, as is the case with everybody else, came a second sooner or later than planned. We struggle with this because it makes us confront our helplessness over the ultimate page of life. It takes away the illusion that proper preparation, good living, or even good fortune can keep a life from crossing some unperceived limit already written.
Such knowledge should not lead us to fatalism, where we do nothing since “everything is already written.” It should rather set us free from the hubris of believing that we can control the terms of our leave-taking. Death is no sneak thief; death is an appointment we have made all along, an appointment whose details are not given to us until the very end. Thinking that makes us change our outlook on the fragility of life, less about staying ahead of death and more about living out the days we have.
Accidents, illness, natural disasters—they are only the means. Time itself is the motor, and when it decides to stop along the road, all the forces in the world cannot keep us moving. Think about those who cheated death in a plane crash by a hairsbreadth, only to be killed weeks later by some other cause. To us, that is a callous or ironic order. But to the tick of time that rules our lives, it is just on schedule. Death assumes innumerable forms, but the timing is precise.
In our society, we invest so much energy into keeping death at bay—diet regimens, gym memberships, herbal remedies, even the occasional superstition. We steer clear of dangerous roads, avoid dangerous sports, and avoid dangerous jobs, all in the hope of “buying” a few extra years. Although these certainly may influence the quality of our living, they don’t conflict with the date already printed on our exit ticket. That realization should keep us humble.
But having this truth does not diminish the passing of one that one loves as anything less than sorrowful. Loss is always painful because love hates absence. But it can be lessened by understanding that the person did not pass “too soon.” They passed at precisely the time that their path was to be cut short. That isn’t surrender—it is reverence for the harmony of life, which sounds no note of ours but its own.
Perhaps the best we can do is shift our gaze from death’s uncertainty to life’s possibility. We cannot negotiate with the timing of the end, but we can make the middle pages worthwhile, something tender, something courageous. If today has the date inscribed on the calendar, invisible but inescapable, then let each preceding day until then be worth recalling
