Sh*t House? Reflections On The Death Of A Famous Comedian.

A recently emerged news leads me to considerations which, if often made on this modest platform, would bear repeating every day.

Let us say, your life is just fine. You are 65; pretty much as healthy as a fish; successful; wealthy; smart; admired wherever you go.

You fall and knock your head somewhere in your hotel room. You think nothing of it, and go to sleep as if nothing had happened because, to you, nothing has happened.

Then you die in your sleep due to the consequences of the fall.

This is what happened – as it was confirmed, actually, yesterday – to the famed US comedian Bob Saget.

There is really so much to say here. The guy was, without any doubt, a celebriteeeee in his native Country and, I would say, beyond the US boundaries. He was raised a Jew, which means that, behind the success and fame, there was already a clock ticking fast there. He was also, as far as I can discern, fit as a fiddle. Finally, he was, if the rumours are true, a guy not averse to inordinate pleasures. Then he knocks his head, in a very last, forceful, memento mori moment. He shrugs it off as a “bad stuff happens” moment.

Then he goes to sleep, and he never awakens.

You can, of course, see it in the other way; that is, see it in the light of the improbable (make no mistakes: my pint is on him finding himself surrounded by strange, red guys with pointed tails, poking him and crying “surpriiiiseeee!”) but not impossible scenario in which Mr Saget is, for reasons it is not given to us to question, actually among the Elect. It is, in fact, fascinating to think how things might, in this improbable but not impossible scenario, have played out.

Perhaps the guy had had doubts for a while, unconfessed to others and even timidly recognised by himself. Perhaps he was, slowly, coming around to the idea that the public would have had to deal with Bob Saget The Convert. Perhaps he had been ruminating on this stuff for a while, unbeknownst to everybody around him. Perhaps the knock on his head was, on a man already so predisposed, the definitive wake up call; the reflection that, harmless as the accident was supposed to be, life can end at any moment, and the choice for Christ is made, there and then, with a full contrition, and a lot of tears. After which comes, with a never before felt serenity, and a new found sense of peace, the welcome rest, and a sweet sleep, and the road to Purgatory.

The Lord works in mysterious ways, and the Lord can call time on us at any time. I normally do not let a day pass without an Act of Contrition, then life has taught me that the day of the Lord does come like a thief in the night.

I would love that at least some of my readers would take this post as an encouragement, and decided to take the habit of reciting an Act of Contrition every day.

Together, if you can, with a Hail Mary for Yours Truly; also a sinner, and one who could be called to his redde rationem in three minutes time, on his way back to work.