Death strikes as it wishes, when it wishes. The Great Equalizer, as they say, has no respect for space or time, for persons high or low, for feelings or emotions. It just strikes, like a thief in the night, and we are left bereft, like lost souls on a raft, seeing nothing but the ocean stretching into infinity.
And we try to find refuge in the usual havens, religion and tradition and customs, but they don’t really help. At best, they cover us with a comforting illusion that enshrouds the mystery even further. They comfort us for a while … until we forget … until the next time. And it starts all over again, this comforting, this forgetting.
Losing someone close to you is not easy to bear. All kinds of emotions and memories are stirred up. And one does not always know how to cope with them. But that’s not all. Someone dies, and your own vulnerability comes into question, pushed to centre-stage from the back rooms of your mind. Before the forgetting and the comforting sooth you back to sleep again, you are forced to be aware that your own death is there on the horizon. The Great Reaper is lurking there somewhere waiting for you. You are forced to realize that Death is not something that happens only to others. It also happens to you. And that’s a sombre thought. Until you start forgetting again.
And, above all, you wonder; what happens after? Aye, there’s the rub! Death is not just passing away from this world, from loved ones and cherished memories; it is also the question: do we pass into something else? Is there anything after? Or is Death the end of everything?
What wouldn’t I give to know the answer to this enigma! My entire life would take on another meaning if I knew the answer to that. Even if I had the absolute conviction that Death meant the end of everything, it would be better than not knowing. But there seems to be no way of knowing. My Catholic upbringing filled me with the promise of a heaven or the threat of a hell, childish notions that reduce an all-powerful God to the level of a pagan witch doctor. And my reasoning mind could not accept that an all-loving God would amuse Himself with sacrificing His Son for my sins and then calling me to render an account of myself, as if my petty faults and peccadilloes could make any difference to Him! Can a child sin against his parents? I finally dismissed this entire religious set-up as nothing more than bewildering nonsense and turned my back on it.
And I used to read a great deal about life after death, and it was always comforting … for a while. But it did not take me long to realize that everything I read had been written by people whose knowledge came from sources that were no more reliable than the ghost stories that adults used to tell me when I was a kid. It was nothing more than a rehash of second-hand information dished out as truth. Pure gobbledygook masquerading as truth, the unconvinced trying to convince themselves by convincing others. How can you be sure of a life after death when there’s nothing to show for it? I don’t wish to be flippant, but wouldn’t it be a lot simpler if a defunct came back from beyond to inform us as to what it’s all about and what to expect? And if that has never happened, isn’t it because there’s probably nothing beyond, or that, if there is, it’s unknowable at our present level of understanding?
Mind you, I’m not saying that there’s nothing beyond death. I’m simply saying that I just don’t know, and that I cannot allow any religion or custom or tradition to lull me into a mindless torpor of forgetfulness, with fake hopes and false promises. I’m simply saying that I cannot allow the most important mystery of my life, Death, to be hijacked by quacks and charlatans, no matter how great their number, or how great their power. I’m simply saying that, if I don’t have an answer to the greatest mystery of my life, neither do they. In the realm of the Unknown, the middleman is just an illusionist, trying to bamboozle me into accepting the claim that he has an exclusive key to the Truth. He doesn’t.
But perhaps I am missing the most important point about Death. Maybe it’s not the after-death that matters but the before-death, the way I live NOW. What if the only lesson that Death teaches us is that life is short, that nothing lasts forever, that, for all our yearning and longing, we cannot add one second to a life that is destined to evaporate into oblivion? And that, consequently, it is in our best interests to live quietly in peace with ourselves, not hurting anyone, negotiating your path through this planet as best as you can? And maybe, just maybe, if we did that, whatever happens after Death --- whether we call it heaven or hell or reincarnation or nirvana --- maybe that would be nothing more than an extension of how we have lived this life?
But I don’t know, I really don’t. However, I do know one thing, though. I know that as the sun is setting over here in the West, it is rising … over there in the East. Maybe my brother’s life, having set over here on Earth, has risen … over there, Elsewhere.
Adieu, mon frère!
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