"The Undiscovered Country"

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life.  A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”  ~Mark Twain

Once I turned 70, I noticed that I watched the news with a slightly different take; when there is news that some well-known person has died, I always note the birth date and age.  While I don’t actually keep score, it feels like I give a plus mark to anyone who lived longer than 70, and a minus mark to those who didn’t make it that long.  I don’t consider this ghoulish or depressing, but simply a reckoning for my own chances or odds for a long life.

I’m not afraid of death since I simply believe I will cease to exist.  But there is no doubt that I’m not ready for death: I have much more to do, and since this is my one shot at living, I want to enjoy every possible moment.  It’s the finality of death that makes living so precious and wonderful.  Philosophers have pondered the “existential void” of the finality of death; some have despaired.  For me that void is all the more reason to savor what time we have here.

The photo above is one I took in Paris at Père Lachaise Cemetery; it’s a pretty grand place, filled with the tombs of many famous people.  It would be tempting to want to be buried in such a place.  But I’m not a great author or musician, so we’ll leave the few places left there for the famous.  My ashes will go elsewhere.  For a long time I just planned on having them scattered (a euphemism for being dumped!) in Stillhouse Hollow Lake by whoever lives longer than I, followed by a beer poured in after me; and then everyone jumps in for a swim.  But lately I have given some thought to having my ashes interred at the Texas State Veteran’s Cemetery.  I’m not sure why that is, other than the cemetery is right down the road from my brother’s house and he’ll have to think about me every time he drives past.  But maybe at least a part of it is that desire to endure past death, and there will be my name, my military branch, and the fact that I’m a Vietnam veteran.  For as long as the cemetery lasts.

But even that kind of memory, or durability, won’t last forever.  I will eventually join that great mass of men and women who roll “around in earth's diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees.”   I hope, when death does come, I will be able to approach it as another poet put it, and be like “one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”