Anecdote – Reporting on my death
Posted on by Opher
Reporting on my death
My death is not real.
I do not know when, how or what form it will take.
I have no beliefs of an after-life. That seems too human a concept to me. My death will be the end of my consciousness. It will be similar to going to sleep. I will simply not wake.
My mind has no concept of the oblivion during sleep when my consciousness no longer operates. It is a little death. There is no sadness and grief in that state for the person concerned. There is only nothingness. The time evaporates. It is empty. The sadness of death only comes with contemplation. We torment ourselves needlessly. The sadness is in the loss of this peephole into the universe. For the dead there is no perception, no sense of loss, no suffering. They simply no longer exist.
Instead of dwelling on death we should be celebrating the wonder of our lives. For this flash of time we have a peephole into a wondrous universe. It is brief, measured in seconds, and it is miraculous. We should maximise that the experience. It will not come again.
I have enjoyed it greatly. I have filled it with as much as I could pack in.
That is a life worth living.
I know I have been lucky. I have loved and been loved. I have read, written, travelled and made friends. I have tasted the best and tested the boundaries.
I shall have few regrets.
My death will be a sadness. Of that I am sure. It will be a sadness to me that I can no longer extend my vocabulary of delights, I can no longer share with the people I love and my peephole will close. It will be a sadness for people who love me.
But no regrets. We have shared and loved enough.
My funeral must be a celebration. I am writing this on a boat travelling to South America. The adventure continues. That is what must be acknowledged. If my life had been empty and mundane that might be a different matter. But it has been full. I am replete. I have already lived a hundred lives and loved as much. What more could any man ask?
Yet still there are decisions.
I vacillate between leaving my body to medical science as my brave mother did, or being buried in a wicker basket so that my flesh may return to the cycle of life. No lead lined coffin for me. I want the living things to have their fill. I have loved my biology.
I have chosen my music well – Little Richard – Rip it Up and Roy Harper – When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease are the two essentials. They’ll be lots of photos of me and I’ll write a piece myself. It’ll be good to talk from beyond the grave. I might even record something. No doubt a few other people might want to say things about me.
I need to plan it a bit more thoroughly.
Strange and ironic– that I now, planning a funeral, I need to flesh out the bones.
The thought of my funeral makes me smile.
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