Unearthing a life.....

I don't usually think much about death. Almost never when you get down to it. In a way, I feel like it's not really my business ... I didn't make the rules (i.e., "from dust to dust" and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it") so I probably wouldn't improve anything by sticking my nose in.

Be all that as it may, I did take to smart-mouthing some of Death's iconography in one of my recent blogs and/or blog comments ... something about purloining the Reaper's blade and using it to cut re-bar. You know how personal gripes can sometimes surface in the disguise of joviality ... wit? I think there may have been a subterranean malignant intent there ... having to do with 'people' who might feel free to take one's personal scissors and cut wire with them. Just speculating. That's more in Doc Bookworm's area of expertise, so I will not be going off in that direction.

Then there was a story related last week by one of the characters on the TV show LOST ... where a man who had beaten his dog to death with a shovel, went to a Man of God and asked if that act would send him to Hell.

"Not if you ask for forgiveness," intoned the priest. So the man asked for, and received, forgiveness.

And then the LOST character remarks, "But he did not beg forgiveness because he was sorry. He begged forgiveness because he wa afraid that if he went to Hell, that dog would be there waiting for him."

That caused me to chuckle and think a bit more about death. Actually, it made me think about the Edgar Allen Poe story about the man who killed a kitten and the Mama cat stalked him and brought about his death on the spikes of an Iron Maiden. The concept of animals purposely seeking retribution can make for an uneasy mind.

On top of all that, the good Dr.'s Bookworm and Bob are working on a joint presentation to the local Unitarians on the subject of The Gifts of Mortality.

So Death has been more on my mind - recently - than is normal. For me. I wish I could say that I took the opportunity to grapple with the spiritual aspects and implications of my own approach to what I trust is a far off event .... but I didn't. Instead, I did a little mental lolly-gagging about with thoughts of how, were I consigned to Hell, would I manage to feel pain .... having left my nervous system, my two-lobed brain, and YEA, even my gorgeous molecular structure back on Earth .... consigned to the dust.

Immediately I begin to see problems with my spiritual self that I had not heretofore been worried about. Once you have abandoned the molecular form for the spiritual form, how do you keep yourself together? What if all my spirit bits just drift aimlessly off to nowhere? And becomes ... as Lorca wrote ... "the stiff emptiness of all that drifts freely..."

Well .... that ought to be worth a few sleepless nights. Right?

I may be in denial, but I am currently believing death is final. I have no recollection of even the most insignificant previous existence, so do not anticipate doing any encores based on this one. Being of the same general design and composition as the other earthly critters, both past and present, that populate the planet, I see nothing of a positive nature that compels me to suspect that I have been endowed with anything other than my alloted years. Those years have been good to me so far. No complaints.

Don't expect to live forever ... just for a little long time more.

Don't expect to be traveling after .... expect to be resting.

But that's then .... and this is now.