NOT YET!
“Wow! It’s been seven years,
I thought you were dead.”
An appropriate thought after all
these years, but no. When life settles down into a routine, sometimes there is just
not enough going on to make it worth documenting. Then, from out of the blue,
comes a thought or two that are worthy. In this case, my own mortality. We ALL
have that to face.
There is an old saying that “The
only guarantee in life is death and taxes”, thank you Ben Franklin. The taxes I have paid for years and have come to realize
that they are inescapable. Death is also inescapable but does not come in the
mail several times a year. Instead, it is a “once in a lifetime event” from which
there is no return.
When we are young, we are indestructible
and immortal, at least in our own minds, leading the young to take insane
chances that some of them do not survive. By middle age, we become aware of the
concept of death but, with reasonable personal care, we view it as something
far in the distance. By age sixty, we become acutely aware of death, but we still
have enough distractions so as to not dwell on it. By seventy, the idea of
death walks with you each day, but you hope not to attract its attention. By
eighty and beyond, just opening your eyes in the morning is worthy of a brief
prayer of gratitude.
I have always imaged life as
an infinitely long ramp that starts at birth with all of the people you know at the
bottom. They all start walking up the ramp and you cannot stop or back up. As
you go farther and farther up the ramp, it begins to narrow and there is not
enough room for everybody. Eventually some people fall off the ramp and, while
you regret their loss, there is nothing you can do to help them or bring them
back. New people join you on the ramp, and it is still very crowded. As the ramp continues to narrow, more and
more people fall off and there are fewer and fewer people left. As you advance up the
ramp, you begin to realize that the ramp is NOT infinite, but rather it is YOUR
ramp. It becomes increasingly narrow, and you realize that you can see the edge, but all you can see beyond the edge is a mass of clouds. You become aware
that soon YOU will be squeezed off the edge and into the clouds of uncertainty
as the thinning mass of people continues to advance. Some people turn to faith, taking
comfort in a belief that that their lives will continue in a place with no
ramp. Others resign themselves to the inevitable without caring what the future
holds. Some, in failing health or personal pain, voluntarily step off. What if
you are the very front person on the ramp? All of your contemporaries are gone, and
the people behind you all have their own lives. Have you become a burden to
them? Are they having to push you up the ramp because you have become so frail? When do you say, “Wait for me!” and step off?
What is ahead for us when we
fall from the ramp? What is it like to die? Is it like going to sleep and
waking up somewhere else? Do you see a bright light and move toward it, leaving
your body behind? Do thoughts simply end, and the lights go out? No one can
answer these questions; death is a one-way trip. Given the numerous possibilities for a lingering or painful death, one can only hope for quick and silent, preferably while sleeping.
What if, as some religions
claim, you meet all of your deceased relatives “on the other side”? How will
they appear? Will they be the age they were when they died? Will they be young
and in their prime? How will you recognize them? My father died at 39 and I’m
now in my 70’s; will I appear older than my father? My grandfather died in his
70’s, will we appear the same age? So many questions without answers. By the
time you learn the answers, you cannot come back to tell anyone. If there is an
internet access in the afterlife, I’ll let you know.
