Death
I’ve been giving it some thought lately. Probably I’m no different in this regard then any middle aged man who is staring it in the face at this point in his life. You’ve lived so many years, and now it’s looking you in the face. And I happen across this article in Scientific American that pretty well tracks my own thoughts on the matter…
Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.It should strike us as odd that we feel inclined to nod our heads in agreement to the twangy, sweetly discordant folk vocals of Iris Dement in “Let the Mystery Be,” a humble paean about the hereafter. In fact, the only real mystery is why we’re so convinced that when it comes to where we’re going “when the whole thing’s done,” we’re dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?
Yeah…that’s about it…
Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you’ve died—and once you’ve died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce. In a 2007 article published in the journal Synthese, University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols puts it this way: “When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there’s an obstacle!”
Actually…I’ve never had that problem. Maybe it’s just a failure of imagination…and mine is altogether too good for my own good. But here it is: Think of sleep. You lay down, and then you sleep. Perhaps you dream. Perhaps you remember a few of them when you wake up. Fine. But what about that part you don’t remember. The part where you are just..not there. That void between sleep and awake. That’s death. Or if that doesn’t do it for you…try to remember what it was like Before you were born. That point in time when you weren’t. That’s it too.
It’s a horrible thing to consider. But ironically, it’s nothing to be afraid of either. There’s a lot of ways of Dying that are worth being afraid of for sure. But if death really is the end of you, then you won’t know it, so it’s really nothing to fear in and of itself. A painful death maybe. A failed life maybe. But the saving grace of actually being dead is that won’t know it.
I’m 55 now. I don’t think I’m going to make it past my sixties. My body is getting tired. I can feel the strength in it slipping away. I think I have more of mom’s side of the family genes in me then dads. Males in her side just don’t last all that long. I figure I have maybe another ten years or so in me and that will be it. Either my heart will go or I’ll get a stroke or something like the males in her side usually do and that will be that.
Of course, that’s assuming I get the natural death and there’s no guarantee of that. I live in the city after all. I was taking my nightly walk the other day, with my iPod’s earbuds plugged in. I was strolling through my neighborhood where I’ve always felt safe, listening to a favorite classical piece, my mind wandering between this and that, when a friggin’ huge pit bull lunged at me from out of nowhere. This lady was walking her dogs…the other one was this little fluffy white thing…and as I passed by the big pit bull suddenly decided to take offense at my existence. There were parked cars between me and her and I didn’t even see them coming, just the motherfucking dog lunging at me from between two parked cars while it’s owner struggled to hold on. "Jesus Christ", I exclaimed, and she looked at me for a moment like she’d have loved to just let the dog go. They walked on by without so much as a word of apology from the lady. And here I always thought my violent Baltimore end would be at the hands of a mugger.
So…it could be anything…really…at any time. It’s a thing I’ve always accepted, I think, somewhere in the back of my mind. But when I was younger, it was only the violent or accidental death that seemed to be looking me over from somewhere just out of reach. I still had most of a natural human lifespan ahead of me, and in that, plenty of time to find a mate. Now I think, I’m just waiting to die because something somewhere in some corner of my mind has finally concluded that it won’t happen. And I’ll pass on from life never having had experienced that love of my life that so many others do…even if it’s only for a while. If I’d had it to do over again, knowing how it would be…I think I might have just opted out.
My brother once helpfully told me that a lot of people never find their soulmate. Thanks brother mine. Another of my gay Happy Hour friends helpfully told me recently that I should give up looking for that certain someone. "I’ve seen the guys you keep looking at," he told me. "People who look like that…want people who look like that." This from a nice looking guy who himself has an older lover. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I get the message. I don’t qualify. I reckon this is why the two of them decided to leave me stranded at the gate.
I kinda like the Fark.Com commenter’s responses to that Scientific American article…
"Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness."
Don’t try that. I did and wound up falling face-first into the coffee table.
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f there’s an afterlife, you probably think "Whoa." If there is no afterlife, it’s probably like the last scene of
He’s probably referring there to that last brilliant last episode of The Sopranos…
Imagining death is the only way I get to fall asleep every night.
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I do this all the time while brushing my teeth in the morning. It makes going to work not seem so bad.
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So what about the virgins?
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As long as I can taste Key Lime Pie.
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The last second firings of the last neurons to go create a neurologicalexperience that only seems to last an eternity.
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Yes I can. I’ve been to Ohio.
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I was not alive for 14+ billion years before I was born, didn’t bother me in the least.
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I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
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In every moment, we choose our eternity. Because eternity happens in an instant. I’m filling mine with love – and cream cheese.
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Isn’t imagining death counter-productive? I mean, if you imagine it, you’ve just proved your alive.
I would think that not imagining death is closer to actual death.
Now there’s a sharp mind.
A five page artical from Scientific America about Death… before noon. Christ, I was hopping to put off my despair untili after 4 o’clock today… Thanks subby… asshat.
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i dreamed that i died one time. i actually went to heaven, and could fly. but i still had to watch out for the powerlines just like i have to do in the dreams where i can fly, but haven’t died.
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Imagine death? I can barely imagine Australia.
What’s awful now is that I can imagine death, but I can’t imagine being in love. Another of my gay happy hour friends gave me a little impromptu lecture the last time I was visiting him, about how having a lover is "work". You gotta love the way coupled people try to make lonely singles feel like they’re not missing out on anything. Especially when they leave you hanging at the gate as though your missing out on a chance to find that certian someone wasn’t any big deal.
Some time ago I bought myself one of those "body pillow" things. For those of you unfamiliar, they’re oversized pillows, about four feet long, that you can cuddle up to for comfort. I’d seen them advertized, mostly to women, and resisted the impluse to go out and get one for myself because I don’t have the kind of brain that can fool myself with subsitutes for the real thing (which is partly why I’ve never just gone out and rented an "escort" for the night). But I was at Costco one day and saw a big box full of them and the ones they were selling were so soft and nice that I found myself checking out with one and brought it home. It’s actually kinda nice to have something to just wrap myself around at night, but the interesting thing I’ve discovered is that just having that…mass…there in the bed with me has become addictive, even if I don’t snuggle up to it. It’s warm, it retains body heat, which will probably be nice when winter sets in here at Casa del Garrett. But the thing is it’s this object that’s just there laying next to me in the bed and now if it’s not there the bed seems so horribly empty that I have to bring it back in or I can’t get to sleep.
There’s probably some primitive subconscious thing going on there, having to do with that human need to have that other there with you. It’s just a big long pillow. It’s not flesh and bone, it doesn’t breath, it doesn’t have a heartbeat, it doesn’t roll over and hog the blankets. It’s just a big soft pillow. But it’s something. We are not made to be single all our lives. But some of us are condemned to be that. The crying shame is it doesn’t have to be that way. All the lonely people don’t have to be that way. The human family could put its mind to fixing that if it only wanted to. But the nature of coupled people is they stop caring about the lonely. They are complete, and they don’t want to be reminded of how it was when they weren’t. So they don’t pay attention to those of us who need help. That leaves us at the mercy of predators…dating service cons…"escorts", love advisers, and other opportunists that just take our money because they know we are desperate and easy marks. At least the body pillow only cost me a few bucks and it doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t.
Sleep these days, is the only time I don’t feel alone. Death won’t be so bad, except if I see it coming I’ll know I failed, and it wasn’t really worth being alive.
[Edited a tad…]
