Death
One of the funniest things about our existence is the fact that we’re granted the consciousness to get attached to our surroundings, but we’re also given an incredibly short lifespan. And, of course, the ability to get panic attacks over the fear of death and the meaninglessness of our lives every midnight.
Death is inevitable and scary, because nobody knows what happens after- so people have no choice but to deal with it through two ways: denial through religion and science, or acceptance.
When I was young, death meant nothing to me because I hid behind my gleaming gate of Christian faith- I couldn’t die because God was there to… I don’t know, send me a spiritual taxi cab up to heaven to hang out with my loved ones?
But at some point my classmates disclosed to me that Santa doesn’t exist, and shortly after that I caught my parents fulfilling the tooth fairy’s job by sneaking money under my pillow in exchange for my tooth. At that point my Faith gate started rusting as I questioned to myself: “Wasn’t it all the same thing? Do good and you’ll go to heaven (“The Nice List”), do bad and you’ll go to hell (“The Naughty List”)?”
One day I heard loud sobbing behind a locked door in our house. I could tell the voice was my mom’s.
I don’t remember how I found out, but my grandpa had died.
For a while after his death I would sleep on the edge of my bed so there would be more space for his spirit (until my mom found out and told me to cut that creepy shit out. Ok, she didn’t actually say that, but I would’ve). I also remember feeling an acute sense of guilt over one of our last memories together, before his surgeries. He drew me a picture of a hand at my request, and I crumbled it up in a temper tantrum because he hadn’t drawn it the way I envisioned it. I would think to myself “Did he know I loved him while he was dying? Did he die thinking I hated him for drawing that hand wrong?” which is a pretty dumb question in retrospect, but I still wish one of the last memories I had with him included me showing him love and respect.
Naturally, my grief was much shorter than my mom’s, but another feeling still remains in its place. It’s that bad feeling new atheists have when they realise ditching their religious belief means the world becomes a lot less magical and a lot more existential dread-fuelled depression. I realised my grandpa isn’t out there watching over me from the clouds, he’s just not there any more. The best way to describe it is like, he’s chronically asleep and will no longer be attending any family events. But his death was probably the final snowflake that sent my habit avalanche of midnight death despair hurtling down.
Even after almost a decade of midnight sadsturbation, I’m still afraid of dying. I mean I cried about it until 3 in the morning last night. But I know I’m on the right track. I’m talking with my relatives about death, because I don’t want them to spend their last minutes alive feeling regretful or scared, I’m educating myself about the process of death, and death has given me (quite literally) a deadline to focus on what’s actually important to me, and use every day purposefully, because 80 years really isn’t a lot of years of living- and I’ve basically already gone through a quarter of it.
Going back to my first paragraph, one of the funniest things about our existence really is that we’re given a consciousness, and also a crippling fear of losing that consciousness. But what’s even funnier is that some of us stress over things as menial as emails and “not fitting in with other people”, when we’re just circumstantially existing on a rock in the middle of infinite space, and we could lose our lives, our senses or our loved ones any day. So whether you take this as a threat or not, use your time wisely. Use death to understand what matters to you.
