This is definitely a tough subject. Unspeakable for some, obsessed over by others, same ol' same ol' for still others. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about life and death, trying to make sense of it all. It's hard, and maybe impossible to make complete sense of it, though it's definitely possible to piece parts of it together.
This last Friday, March 7, 2003, my dad called me and told me that my god-brother Vince, rest his soul, shot himself in the head after his girlfriend broke up with him. He was 22, and drugs and alcohol dulled his senses. He made mistakes, as all humans do, and his were particularly serious ones. He took his life over a stupid reason, and this particular mistake is one that can never be taken back, or made right.
Life...is not like comic books, or movies, or video games. We know this, but it doesn't really hit until something happens to someone close to us. When we die, we can't hit re-set. We can't heal ourselves at miraculous rates. We don't have spells or mystical potions to bring us back from the dead. When we die, regardless of ressurection or not...that's it for that life. We lose the things we had. Our loves, our children, our material possessions.
Am I afraid of death? There was a time I said I wasn't afraid of anything. That was utter nonsense. Truth is, deep inside...I do fear death. I don't want to die. There are so many things I have yet to do, so many things I have yet to say. Places I want to go, people I want to meet.
And to tell you the truth, I have not been a godly person. I'm playing the odds that when I die, I will be old in a bed so that I can make peace with God and get forgiven in my last moments, and live up a life of sin. I'm not expecting to wake up, make my way out to the bus stop and get run over by some drunk in a pick-up truck. If there is a heaven, and there is a hell, I sure as hell don't want to re-open my eyes and come face to face with a laughing luciferous figure, bent on ruining the rest of my eternal damnation (which, as irony would have it, lasts for eternity).
Death is the anti-climax of life. It's the end of everything you know, the loss of everything you have. You are not Lazarus, nor Jesus. You won't reawaken after three days. Death is depressing, but death is not just a fictitious poem. It's reality.
I am still reeling in shock from my friends' death. It's not something I expected, or planned for. He was young, and barring diseases or freak accidents, had potential to lead a productive life. As was sung in one Eagles' song, "Men get lost sometimes, as years unfurl".
Be careful...with your life, your decisions, your actions. Because death is a finish. Death is the finish. I'm not a religious preacher, and I'm not going to say that there is a hell, or there is even a better place after you die...but I will say that whatever happens, just be careful with yourself. Don't make mistakes that you won't be able to regret, because you won't be around.
