Third Monday Musing

Only the dead know

By Ed Rogers

As a young man, I didn’t give much thought to death or dying. However, as you get older you begin to notice people who are younger than yourself passing away.
    I don’t believe that my age or even my health paints a picture of a shorter road as much as does the death of a close friend who is my age or younger. My first thoughts upon hearing of such a death are: I just spoke to him and he/she seemed fine, or what the hell did he/she die from? Not that it really makes any difference.
    The strange thing is I lost many more friends during my youth than I do now. One of the reasons being, I have fewer friends now than I had then. I would hear that so & so got killed in Nam or a car wreck, even by drowning, and I never related it to myself. Now, as movie stars and politicians who I grew up with die off, it does have an effect on me. It is like watching pieces of my life fade away.
    My wife, and I am sure a lot of people, fear death. I have come so close to death, so many times, at some point I stopped worrying or caring. One day I’ll feel a pain in my chest or an explosion in my head and seconds later, I’ll have the answer to the great mystery.
    The question whether or not there is life after death should not concern us. It doesn’t me. I can do nothing about it one way or the other, but if there is something after death, I will try to enjoy it as much as I have this one – if there isn't something, I won't know about it.
    Religion has done a great disservice to humankind by attempting to prove there is life after death. It is not something we can prove, but churches play on the fear of death to fill their plates each Sunday or Saturday, while telling their flock they must have faith that there is a Heaven and a loving God waiting on them in the hereafter. They ask people to have this blind faith without being able to demonstrate any reason to have it other than to ease the fear of dying. Faith does not make anything true, but it does close the mind to the possibility that there may be nothing waiting.
    It is nice to think that you will see your loved ones on the other side. It does ease the pain of loss, and there is nothing wrong with it. However, once you close your eyes that last time, you are lost to this world and all its worldly goods. To debate about a life after death is foolish. Only the dead know the answer. Like the saying goes: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die to get there.”

Copyright © 2015 by Ed Rogers