David Takes On: Death

Death.

It's going to happen to you. Whether you like it or not, you, and everyone you've ever known and loved, is going to die.

It's not so much that we die, but how we die I think is what scares us the most.

The reason I mention this is because my grandmother is dying. I am watching her waste away before my eyes. She has cancer. It started in her breast, moved to her bones, and finally metastasized and spread to her lungs, liver, and kidneys. Her liver is shutting down. She's jaundiced. She is a pale shadow of her former exuberant self. It's made me think a lot about why we die, and when, and how.

I don't think it hurts to die, per se. It hurts a lot more to live. Grandma is comfortable, at least. She's on medication for any pain she has. And of these days very soon, she is going to fall asleep, and she won't wake up.

I've often wondered what happens we die. Anyone who ascribes to any major religion believes in an afterlife. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all have a heaven to go to, whether it's inhabited by the savior, your ancestors, or 72 Virginians (I still think Robin Williams had it right when he said that's what await martyrs in heaven... at least, that's what I like to think). But I think it's a lot more simple than that. Try to think back to before you were born. Back beyond your earliest memory. There's nothing there, is there? There's nothing to remember. And that's what I think death is like. It is literally nothing. It's not an infinite blackness, it's no paradise, there's no purgatory or limbo or hell or zombies to worry about. To fear death is to fear nothing. Because death is nothing.

So I'd like to reiterate this from an earlier post: be good to one another, because life is far too precious not to.

Consider yourself taken on, Death.