We’re All Gonna Die, So…

trigger warning: death, suicide

Death has been a recurring thought for me this past couple of weeks. Not in the sense that I desire it upon myself anytime soon, but in the sense that recent events have forced me to reckon the reality of it in the midst of life. Within the past two months alone, I’ve brushed up against 8 deaths — 5 due to medical illness, 2 by suicide, and 1 by vehicular accident. I personally knew two of them, while the rest were relatives/friends of my friends, colleagues, and former students.

Wow. It still somewhat stuns me that I now have to use the past tense in talking about them. I now have to say “I knew them” instead of “I know them.” “They were” instead of “They are.”

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Death brings up a mix of different thoughts and feelings in me. On the one hand, it comforts me to know that for all of life’s uncertainties, there is at least one fact which is absolute and self-evident, which I could really believe is true, and which everyone else knows to be true — and that fact is that everyone dies. On the other hand, that very fact is the same thing that confuses me. If we’re all gonna die anyway, then why are we alive at all? For pleasure? For struggle? For a little bit of both? For the entertainment of the gods? For the purification of our souls before we’re deemed worthy to enter a more blissful state?

Different philosophers answer these questions differently, as do different religions. See, our answer to why we’re alive at all tends to depend on our view of the afterlife, a matter largely dealt with by religion. While there is no question that we’re all gonna die, there are A LOT of questions (and more answers than we can fit in our puny brains) about what happens after we die. Some view this life as merely a preparation for the next life — in death the physical body decays but the soul ascends to heaven, where it rejoins with its loved ones and with God for all eternity. Others believe in reincarnation — the soul is reborn into another form, which usually depends on how the past life was lived. Still others believe there is simply no afterlife — when this life ends, we end with it.

Which of these do you believe?

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I am Catholic, but when I think about death, I think about all these possibilities and I can’t help but consider that one possibility could really be just as likely as each of the others. I mean, if I were born into a family/place that practices, say, Buddhism, would I not have believed in reincarnation and nirvana instead of purgatory, heaven, and hell?

I don’t know if my lack of absolute certainty about what happens after death makes me one of the “lost” or the “unfaithful” in the eyes of the Catholic Church or the devout Christian, but right now this is truly where I’m at when it comes to the question of the afterlife. I feel like it’s practically a coin toss, and until the penny drops (sorry, can’t resist the pun!), one cannot know for sure what side will show. In other words, for now we each have our own views, but I guess we gotta die first before we’re finally afforded the answer as to what really happens after death.

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I have sifted over my feelings and thoughts about death, and I’ve come to realize that when it is deemed my time is up (by whatever force decides it), I’m not afraid to die. Sure, I’m afraid of the pain and suffering of illness or whatever else might cause me to die, but ultimately it’s not death I fear, just the pain and trouble of getting to the other side.

In the meantime that I am alive, I allow thoughts of death to remind me to live. It’s so easy to forget our time here is limited. But when you’re staring at a coffin enclosing the body of someone you used to talk with, laugh with, be with…you get jolted back to the realization that there’s only so much time to talk with, laugh with, and be with the people you have in your life, meet ones you haven’t met yet, and talk with, laugh with, and be with them, too. So, you know, why not die later? The latest that you can. You have an eternity to be dead later on.

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While you are here, live.

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Live fully. ♥

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Image by Albert de Bruijn via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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