Death

I've been thinking about this lately (well, who hasn't?) but it really doesn't seem to strike people of the finality of it all. You don't fall to the bottom of the canyon like Wile E. Coyote and bounce back to terrorize the world. You aren't a cartoon character.

I know it seems like Life 101 but when you're gone, you are sincerely, irrevocably gone. There will be no cocktails or conversations by the fire or arguments with your partner, there will be really, really, no nothing. There will be no Heaven with twenty virgins. There will be no Hell and Satan and his eternal pitchforks. No eternal torture or rapture -- it's just a mechanism to cope with the idea of dying.

Remember before you were born? I thought not. Well, that's exactly what it's going to be like. Nothingness. It's very hard to grasp, but there is plenty of nothingness, all around us.

Trust me, you won't miss anything, because there will be nothing. This is not necessarily a bad thing. You won't be here to miss it. I know, thinking about the absence of thinking is disturbing, but it won't be like sleeping. There won't be lucent periods where you dream about some thing or other.

I had a seizure when I was in Japan in the 80s, and trust me, you feel nothing. It's complete, utter, terminal blackness. There's nothing to think because you have NOTHING TO THINK WITH.

I try to imagine where my father is but at the same time I know where he is. He is nowhere. But even if I had explained to him the concept of nowhere, he wouldn't have minded. He was a pretty logical guy. As I type I have my sleeping son next to me, twitching as he does: life.

When life goes, everything goes with it. It's bestowed upon us, not by some munificent god, but by nature, and when you eat a tomato, the life goes out of it, but it was born for the sole purpose of someone eating it.

I am the opposite of religious -- a ferocious advocate for the causes of non-religion -- but I do always treasure this amazing miracle that not only allows us to be alive in this tiny corner of this truly vast, vast universe, but also be aware that we are.

That we are.

I get married tomorrow. Wish me luck. Not that I need it.