Another day, another death

Disclaimer: Much of this blog is fiction, much of it truth. Many of these "dead" exes are not my own—I don't like people shitting on my girls, hence the massive amount of obituaries of late. Who these victims belonged to is immaterial I suppose, but I've certainly hit a nerve . . . power of the pen and all that.

Ethan was an oil trader who readily admitted he knew nothing about oil save for when to buy it, hold its position and sell it. In an effort to expand his knowledge base in order to grow his newly formed trading firm—for his business was all he held dear to him, all that seemed to keep him warm at night—he decided to take a trip. His travels took him to Alaska, where he managed to finagle himself a tour of an offshore rig. After being guided around the rig by one of the drillers, Ethan—a curious, bookish, isolated fellow—decided to wander off on his own. Now, as most everyone knows, save for the oddly ignorant oil trader himself, oil rigs can be rather hazardous places.
It was a bitterly cold day, so Ethan was layered up sartorially, no doubt in designer duds. As he was climbing one of the decks, however, his rather expensive but functionally useless designer hiking boots caused him to trip on a slippery patch of oil. He tried to grab onto a ladder, but alas, his Loro Piana gloves provided cashmere comfort, but no grip. He fell hard on the deck and hit his head. Disoriented and concussed, he stood up and backed up several feet, right into the ice-cold (literally) water. His heavy designer clothes weighed him down and made his death a forgone conclusion, for Ethan, even though he'd grown up in California, had never learned to swim. He drowned in the freezing water with nary a scream. And since Ethan had no family and few friends, he'd never bothered to draft a will, even though his net worth, one presumes, was well into the millions. Thus his treasured material possessions that he'd spent his lifetime accumulating and cultivating in favor of love, friends and family were all donated to charities.
And as he drowned and froze, one wonders whether he was thinking of material things or of people he'd known. When his life flashed before his eyes, did he see dancing dollar signs or missed opportunities for human contact? Did he think of money, power or his myriad superficial, ostentatious pursuits or did he think of all those people he could've known and loved who he chucked in favor of insignificant possessions? We'll never know, I suppose, but one thing did manage to float to the surface of the water and survive the horrific accident: his Breitling timepiece. I gave it to my dad.