'Six Feet Under' Moments

One of the most interesting features of the wonderful, but recently ended HBO series "Six Feet Under" was the opening segments of each episode in which a person who is about to become a client of the fictional funeral home Fisher and Diaz meets his demise. These segments were often morbidly playful, especially when they involve people who will be done in by their own stupidity or neglect, like the baker who climbs into a dough mixer without cutting off the power or the guy who leans out of his car to pick up the paper, falls out and is crushed under his own SUV.
I was thinking of those moments while doing work around the house yesterday, and it suggested to me that the show's writers may have done thousands of viewers an unwitting service by teaching us to be more careful in our daily lives. Standing on a ladder in my garage, for example, I scanned the ground below for any sharp objects on which I could be impaled if I fell. How easy to picture myself with a rake sticking out of my guts as the screen fades to white and my birth and death dates flash in the screen.
I thought of those "Six Feet Under moments" again this morning when I heard the news about Kyle Lake, the 33-year-old pastor in Waco, Tex., an oterwise intelligent person by all accounts who died as a result of a moment of bad decision-making. Performing a Baptism while immersed in water up to his shoulders, Pastor Lake reached for a microphone, and was electrocuted as his followers looked on in horror.
The recent horrors of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and suicide bomb onslaughts have surely brought home the message that all our planning, our hopes and dreams and aspirations can come to an abrupt end in the tragic blink of an eye. But a story like that of Pastor Lake and other "Six Feet Under" moments reminds us, as well, that despite all the long-term decisions and tough choices we make throughout our years, one seemingly insiginificant choice or decision or idea can turn out to be the most consequential act of our lives.