Mortality

There is an unhealthy preoccupation over what happens to us when we die. What's stranger is that we don't often dwell on the eternity that preceded our existence but instead devote an awful amount of time and thought to where we go after we die. How would you comfort a dying person? is a question I've asked myself over and over. With absolute clarity I should hope. There is some value in false comfort and reassuring the dying that there is some infinite wonder waiting for them. But it is infantile at best, and I find it disheartening that childish assurances are lobbied around the hospital bed without a shred of mediated thought. But the question remains, how would you comfort the mother/sister/brother/friend/father dying right before you? By telling them that the life they lived was enough, that they need not fear the unknowable and that there is nothing more they should feel they need. That a life lived with people that love them honestly and deeply should more than suffice. That I feel, would be an unbeatable comfort. For the ones that love you the most don't reside above you, nor do they shy away when you need them. The ones that love you will be before your very eyes - to touch, to feel, to appreciate one last time. A beauty far greater than anything that can be promised because its tangibility is finally clear.


No such thing as heaven for you then? is another question I ask myself. Far from it. I reject the heaven of fairy tales and logistical inconsistencies, the heaven teased to you by the gullible and easily impressionable, the heaven which demands unconditional love and regulates that through fear. The heaven which I believe in is here on earth, in the people and in the loves I love. That for me, will ever be enough.

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I am terrified as I write all of this down because it unmistakably signals a staggering loss of faith. Yes, I am afraid and it would be more than easy to fall back on the stories I was told as a child. But I feel that there is so much more to be discovered if I allow myself to be governed by knowledge instead of fear. Perhaps I've lost my "faith", but in its absence I've gained insight.