That's hilarious! Reminds me of the time my mother fretted over my teenage brother's failure to come home one night. "If I find out he's alright, I'm gonna kill him!"

The expression, "wake up dead," always makes me laugh. It reminds me of the sardonic view of life and death held by my depression-era relatives in rural North Carolina. To "wake up dead" is to die a foolish death.

The saying usually accompanied a warning, such as, "Don't ____ or you'll wake up dead!" It's meant to keep another from death AND the added insult of waking up in the next life to the realization that he or she did something fatally stupid.

I may be reading too much into Brian Oxman's statement, but it appears he didn't want Michael to open his eyes in the hereafter, only to say, "Aw, man! That's not how I wanted to go out!" In which case, Michael (Hyatt), your essay is right on target. We cannot control the timing of death or avoid its inevitability. But let us do what we can to avoid dying foolishly or in vain.