How do I die properly...

Hey all so I have a sprite setup to set animation to dying once contact is made with boss enemy - however if I touch anything after hitting him or still have arrow key down it just by passes the animation and starts running again... i have it like so

have you tried is "overlapping + Trigger once" ?

And have you checked that the animation is not looping or and that stuff?

where I get the trigger once from?

'Trigger once while true' is a System condition: https://www.scirra.com/manual/124/system-conditions

Also you could disable collisions on the object when it collides with the boss, this way it will only collide once with the boss.