Superstitions & Death

This is a hard post to write.

I've been thinking about death for a long time now. In a way, death is a central theme to my thinking. There is no doubt in my mind that this is partially due to my father's continual suffering from the ravages of juvenile-onset diabetes as well as other factors, such as my love for ultra-violent computer games and movies. I'm not the only one who thinks about death a lot - society is focused as much on the end of life as it is the act of living.

Why is this? Why is the end of life so endlessly facinating not only to me, but to countless billions of others who have existed throughout the history of the world? Death is the last great unknown, the only place that man cannot explore and report back his findings. We can fly over the face of the earth in a matter of hours, dive to the depths of the ocean, and send unmanned probes to other planets. In time, we shall travel the stars with such grace and ease that it will look like we have been doing it since the beginning of the Universe. However, no one will ever be able to definitively tell us what happens when we die.

What is death? Death is something final. You cannot come back from the condition of death, regardless of what you may hear of the dead being revived. If someone can be revived, than they weren't really dead, merely skirting the edge of the void. Some people who have returned from this condition of pseudo-death have claimed to see what lies ahead, but their accounts can be easily dismissed. If you were brought back, you were not really dead. Since you weren't really dead, you did not see anything that your brain didn't just make up.

What happens when we die? Absolutely nothing. The question is moot. I'm dead, for chrissakes, I can't care. From our observer's standpoint, the world ends when we die. When I die, you can toss my body, which is nothing but tissue and bone, wherever is convenient, be it in a nicely dug hole or a drainage ditch. Funerals suck, so I demand not to be given one. Furthermore, if anyone can use anything from my corpse to live a better life (heart, lungs, liver, kidnies, corneas, etc.), let them have it. I'm dead. My ability to give a fuck is non-existant.

Something I've said bears repeating: funerals suck. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. This supersitious ceremony has absolutely no basis in reality; they're just something that we made up to try to feel better about the whole situation. We have been socially conditioned to think that we need to hold ceremonies in the presence of a corpse when a person dies. I mean, what the hell is that all about? While modern Christians are quick to dismiss most of the beliefs of the ancient Babylonians (for example) as nothing but fairy-tales and superstitions, their own ceremonies are different only in practice, not in sentiment. I don't need a ceremony to say goodbye to a friend or loved one. I don't want to be surrounded by family and friends, revelling in sorrow and attempting to console one another. If anything, I just want to be left the fuck alone for a few days and then maybe talk about the dead a little over a drink.

I go to funerals out of respect for the beliefs of those who are dead, not for any personal gratification or closure. I will not dishonour the beliefs of people I loved by not attending their funerals, no matter how foolish.

My grandmother died yesterday. She was a lovely person, someone adored by everyone she knew (or, at least, I never met her enemies). I'm going to a funeral on Friday and a church service on Saturday. Unfortunately, these will probably become my last memories of her. I will recieve no closure or solice from these ceremonies, merely a weekend of frustration and homesickness. It is out of my love for her that I will go "home" (a misnomer, my home is now my apartment, not the house in which I grew up) and do what is considered to be my social duty to both the dead and the living.

This is an open statement to anyone I know who will ever read this: please don't do me the indignity of putting me on display and having a farce of a funeral. Dispose of the body in the cheapest way possible and hoist a few in my memory. I promise, I'll do the same for you.