Fearing Death

Do you fear death? I'm going to take away your age, knowing that a thirteen-year-old is not going to much (but an 18-year-old in Afghanistan might).

If you do, what precisely do you fear? Death itself, ie. what might happen after, or not being here, where you are now? Or do you even fear death because of the horror that your non-presence will ruin many lives around you?

I fear death, but it fluctuates on a daily basis. Sometimes I get very anxious, others, I couldn't give a shit. Sometimes I'm completely calm. Sometimes I fear far more the death of people around me -- the ie. what the hell am I gonna do if they're gone?

This is different. This is your own death. Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the death of my eldest brother, a great friend to me. But he's now abstract. He comes to me many times in my dreams, but he doesn't come screaming and saying "I'm dead, Nick! I'm dead!" Far from it. He's his amiable self in some weird dream situation and it's all as it used to be.

Me? I know now, without equivocation, that my personal death will just be my return to nothingness. Before I was born, even when I was in my mother's womb, there was absolutely nothing. It was a darkness so profound, so complete, that I have no reason to fear it. Just as I can not contemplate the .01⁹⁹⁹⁹ first second of the Big Bang, I know I am not able to contemplate oblivion. So I don't.

I think of being in my mother's womb, oblivious to everything, indeed, oblivious to everything until about age two. Was that scary? No.

I once had a seizure. The blackout was so complete, it was as though someone had gone all around my brain, turning off 650 trillion light switches all at once. I woke up, but in waking up I realised I had been, for all intents and purposes, dead. Not a single synapse was firing. And that thought bothered me not in the least.

If that is death, if oblivion is death (which it is) then not a single one of us needs be afraid. The way of dying? Sure, that can be be horrifying, but you'll be dead soon enough and you'll have not a whiff of memory about it. A root canal before dying to the power of ten, maybe.

No, the most reason I fear death is that plant on my balcony that I'll never see again. That sunrise, that argument, that drink at the the restaurant, the touch of my wife, the mere fact of being alive, that others will still be here, that others who are here will count the anniversary of my death like I count my father's, even though he gives it nary a thought.

No, my conclusion is that it's not scary to die; it's just scary not to be alive.