I was reading a forum thread about a scuba accident that killed a friend of my brother’s, and which my brother was also involved in finding the body after the RCMP tried and failed.
One of the thread contributors posted this thing for divers, but it made me think of Mike and Dave’s recent death in their float plane, and my own thoughts about the possibility of dying in a plane crash.
If I should die while diving.
If I should die while diving please do not hesitate to discuss the incident and assess every element with a view to furthering your understanding of how to enhance diver safety.
If I should die while diving get the facts. They won’t be readily available and will definitely not be correct as reported by the media. But get the facts as best you can.
If I should die while diving understand, as I already do, that it will most likely involve fault on my part to some degree or another so do not hesitate to point that out.
If I should die while diving some of the fault will probably belong to my buddy and that needs to be honestly assessed as well though I must admit this is one area where I hope that compassion will be in the mix.
If I should die while diving there might be those who try to squelch discussion out of a misplaced notion of respect for the deceased, family and friends. They can say nice things about me at my funeral… but in the scuba community I want the incident discussed.
If I should die while diving at least I didn’t die in bed.
I could do a search and replace of “diving” with “flying”, and it’s pretty close to something I’d like to say to my fellow pilots and my nervous but understanding wife. Well, except for the bit about buddies – we don’t use a buddy system in flying even when we should.