death.

In dealing with death, it’s been easy for me to accept that when people die, that’s exactly what they do. I believe dying means not leaving this Earth for another, not sailing up to heaven to be with your other deceased friends and family (and other cool dead people like George Carlin), but nothing. Dying is returning to the nothing, just like before birth.

I’ve known and loved a lot of people that have died, mostly family members over the years. As someone who has been pretty close to death, I have come to accept it as the end of the road. Today I am faced, yet again, with death. Someone that I grew up with since kindergarten died this morning in a tragic house fire. Unlike the others, he wasn’t old, or diseased, or addicted. This one really hit hard; he wasn’t your average person, so full of life, genuine and kind to everyone. He treated everyone with respect and was revered by all who knew him. I definitely wouldn’t say this about just anyone, but the world is definitely worse off without him.

Death is uncomfortable because no one really knows what exists after life. Most people console themselves by believing that life exists after death either with reincarnation, heaven, or some other means of the “soul” passing on. Assigning souls to physical bodies means sure they’ll leave us right now, but they’ll never truly die. It is customary to say Rest in Peace; God has another angel; He’s watching over me, etc.

I think these are the most selfish things people could say in a time of death. Death should be a celebration of life and a time to reflect on what truly matters, a reminder of how fragile we all are. Death should not be a time when people selfishly appease their own fears of dying. All of these sayings put focus on the sayer, which is not what I think death is about.

I have read all of these death appeasements multiple times today through people’s reactions to the tragedy on Facebook. All I can do is shake my head and try to focus on what’s important. People react to death as if they know it’s not final in what I believe is an attempt to calm their fears about their own imminent demise.

Someone once told me that they believe god is the energy of life, what you give out comes back to you because energy is neither created nor destroyed and when you die your energy is expended into the universe. Although not a bad idea, it’s not what I believe. What happened today solidified my belief that god doesn’t exist as energy, as karma, as an omniscient being in the sky, as anything most people believe. A death like the one that hit today, unwarranted by every definition of the word, brings me to feel such complete sadness. The thought that someone so good could have (what I’m guessing was) a painful, agonizing death means we’re all royally fucked.

I so badly want to believe that my friend is up in heaven and looking down on all of us as many of my classmates do. I’ve often tried to picture my mother as someone who will greet me in the afterlife as the woman I knew when I was a little girl. I just can’t do it.

Some would argue that my thoughts on death make life meaningless. If there’s no ultimate reward, what are we living for? Why should I be good if there’s nothing in it for me?

Each person needs to decide what’s important in their life and cherish it. I tend to live life one day at a time, not thinking about the distant future or the ultimate end. I try to be good and kind to others because that is just how we should treat all living things, reward or not. Life is so precious and extremely insignificant and incredibly disposable all at the same time. And this fascinates me to no end.

"Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over...Death is not anything...death is not...It's the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound..."
-Tom Stoppard