La Muerte no duerme.
If the tales be true, some stormy night Old Hornie will ride up to the Old Warlocks' Home on a black horse (who knows, these days he may drive up in a black Porsche), sling me over his shoulder, and carry me off screaming into the night.
And they'll say: Well, that's the end of him.
Well, maybe. Otherwise, barring the unforeseen or the mob with torches and pitchforks (these things do happen), I'll have my heart attack and be dead before I hit the ground. That's generally how men in my family die. My lifelong vegetarianism may buy me a few extra years and better health at the end, but the final prognosis is nohow in doubt.
With luck, I'm looking at another 30 years ahead; with lots of luck, maybe another 40. I've always admired the title of Margaret Murray's autobiography: My First Hundred Years. She died at 101.
In every language that I've ever studied, death is a noun, but, of course, death is not a noun, a thing. What we call death is a cessation, a stoppage: when the parts stop working together. That it's so intangible somehow makes it that much more undefinable.