If I were a betting man and a gambling addict with no morals or conception of decency, all of which I am sadly this close to being, I definitely wouldn't put any money down on my grandmother winning this round of chess with death. Apparently she's on what is commonly referred to as a "death bed," which you think would be peaceful and comfortable but in actual fact is made up of whirring machines, tubes that alternate between sucking and pumping, and a tv stuck on endless repeat episodes of Oprah and Dr. Phil. And here you thought hell was somewhere you arrived at after death.

The nice thing about being an atheist is that there's no real need to spend too much time preoccupied with death. When death is nothing, one has nothing to worry about. You're freed from concerning yourself with fate, destiny, karma, tea leaves, chicken bones, or whatever means you use to comfort yourself about the unknown. When you see life as walking blindfolded across a 6-lane highway covered in zooming automobiles driven by senile old people and drunk underage drivers, you can't concern yourself with whether God is on your side. Your only thoughts should be that when the bumper inevitably hits, that it hits hard and fast enough so that the end will be quick and painless. Who needs to know what make of car it was?

So when it comes to my grandmother, who's 96 and has lived a "full life" (whatever that means), what I feel saddest about is that the metaphorical car that hypothetically hit her barely figuratively nicked her. Instead of flipping her into the air and having her lifeless body crash through the windshield, she's been spun around and left limping confusedly back from whence she came.