Skydiving can be deadly.

Just look at Dorothy Hoffner of Chicago, who died recently after tandem jumping in Ottawa, Illinois.

Sure, she was 104 years old — probably the oldest person to ever skydive — and the jump went perfectly, and she didn’t die until passing away peacefully in her sleep at home several days later, but still. We can’t rule out a connection.

I mean, wouldn’t it just be the perfect way to go?

Up until the very end of your long conga line of days, to still be breaking records, challenging yourself, getting accolades for and acknowledgement of your efforts, still displaying the indomitable human spirit long past the time that most bodies expire — it’s the ultimate good death.

Ms. Hoffner said that one of the secrets to her extended life was never having to deal with “the pettiness and the mess” of a husband or the “responsibility” of children. And though I feel like, in my life, both are usually worth the trade-off in years, I will say this: Fair enough.

Ms. Hoffner also said her temperament might have helped her live to 104, calling herself “lazy.” She said she always did just what she wanted to do, drinking wine and eating chocolate and doing anything else that struck her fancy, even if that thing was nothing at all.

That’s the kind of life hack I can get behind.

We’re so conditioned these days (and in this country) to always be “doing” things, to be constantly propelling ourselves forward at top speed. We feel guilty when we’re lazy, guilty when we please ourselves, when we pause and luxuriate and have fun.

There are entire teams of marketing professionals devoted solely to persuading us to engage in what we call “guilty pleasures,” despite the overwhelming evidence that, in moderation, they’re not all that much to feel guilty about.

And as far as skydiving goes, Ms. Hoffner got the timing just right, I say.

I’ve always said I didn’t want to die doing any kind of recreational activity, but now I think I should amend myself and say that I’m fine with it as long as I’m 104 years old.

Ms. Hoffner had the ultimate open mind. There’s something so free about that choice, living to 100 years old — when she skydived for the first time — and then deciding you might like to try jumping out of a plane.

I mean, why the heck not?

She might have asked herself, and likely did: “What’s there to lose? My life, of which I’ve freely partaken for decades longer than even the luckiest of humans? So what?”

For the lucky among us, we can all be Ms. Hoffner’s apprentices. The risks we’re afraid to take, the adventures we’re afraid to go on, we can ask ourselves: What’s there to lose? I mean, really to lose?

Are we, the fortunate, worried we’d lose our cars, our houses, the ability to go out to dinner at nice restaurants and to wear new clothes? So what? Those things were all gifts in the first place, gifts that few get to enjoy.

It’s clear Ms. Hoffner knew something about life, and death. I doubt she intentionally released her iron horse of a body from further responsibility, but maybe she jumped out of that plane, and talked to all those reporters afterward and saw her story on TV and in the newspaper and considered what she’d done, and just thought, “It can’t get any better than this.”

And she would have been right.

With that record-breaking jump, her body cleaved in two, her feet landing on the ground as her spirit remained forever in the sky.

And even if skydiving is what caused Dorothy Hoffner to pass on, can any of us argue that there would be a better way to die?

I certainly can’t.