Endings 101

Recently, three of my friends have departed, and by that I mean they have died. But see our language and our imagination prevent us from saying simply “they died”.  Instead, we have invented this massive tale about what happens after we die. I guess, depending on how far away from reality we live in our minds, we believe different things. Many, many folks say, after someone dies, that they are now watching us from up above, that is, the person is now sitting on a cloud somewhere up above us and observing us.  Now that is just too weird, but it remains fairly common.

I have now reached a magic age—88+. In December, I will reach 89 years.  Yes, I climbed aboard this thing we call life on December 17^th, in the year 1934. Until recently, I was just cruising along like everyone else.  Then one day I realized that I had already surpassed in life years everyone of whom I am aware in my immediate family. That is, no one known to me as family has ever made it this many years.  A few came close, i.e., 85 years, but none, to my knowledge hit the upper 80s, or even 90.

And so, I am now looking at “life” a little differently. I understand that I may make it til 90, or, hopefully, even higher in years.  But I also understand that each day is special, a gift if you will.  And when a friend passes on, ceases to exist, I am saddened and sometimes shocked.  Recently, an especially close friend, George Stiles, died—bang out of the blue. We had just been trying to call him because we had not seen him in a while and he often stayed with us a day or two enroute to one of his kids.  And we failed to make contact by phone. So we thought maybe we just had an old telephone number, so I looked him up on the Internet, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but, “An Obituary for George Stiles”.  First, I thought, “no, it’s someone else”. But then I looked at the picture and, Yep, it was our dear friend George.

It was a shock. We could no longer speak with George. And then another reality came into my brain. George no longer exists. That is, his brain has ceased functioning, and so he no longer exists. And we can’t use these terms like, “he is gone”, or “George has departed”, or “oh my George has left us”.  And why can I not think those thoughts? Well, because, the reality of death is that the person who dies actually ceases to exist, because his brain stops functioning.  He is “dead” but he does not know he is dead, because he does not any longer “know” anything.

And, although I knew that, suddenly, with George, that reality set into my brain. Yeah, when I die, I will no longer know anything, including that I am dead. I will simply go dark, but I will not even know that everything just went dark.  No, but what will that be like? Well, nothing. Yeah, when life ceases, we do not know that life has just ceased. And that isn’t like anything that we have known throughout our long lives.

So, now, daily, I am aware of life and life things differently. When I look at a lantana flower or an hibiscus flower and then observe some critter on that flower, I watch it carefully. That life form is special because I am observing it. And it isn’t that I am now depressed thinking about life terminating. Oh I know it will and I have at least a dim understanding about cessation, but one can only dimly understand this end of life thing. Mainly, because there is nothing to understand. You are aware one second and the next you are not aware. And that is it. There is nothing else to understand.  Now we could, I assume argue about whether my conclusion is accurate, but such arguments are pointless, because we can never shed any light through evidence on the subject. So, you are free to believe the cloud thing, and I am free to believe the ending thing.  Why anyone argues about such things is quite beyond my comprehension, unless one belief gives someone control over another by that belief. Oh and that would be called religion, huh? OK, believe on folks. It’s all up to you. Whatever turns you on.