Fear of Death

Woody Allen once said, “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”  I think both my parents enjoyed such an avoidance.  They were both victims of dementia, so when they died, they didn’t realize they were dying.  In a sense, they weren’t there when it happened.

The actress, Valerie Harper, said “We’re all terminal.”  From the moment we're conceived, we're doomed.  We as human beings are no different than any other life form.  All plants and animals die.  Would we prefer being rocks that just sit there for a million years?  I think not.

In the 1967 Western movie, Hombre, Paul Newman's character, John Russell, says, "We all die.  Only a question of when."

In the 1992 Western movie Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s character, Will Munny, says, “Hell of a thing, killing a man.  You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever going to have.”  Life is all we really have.  It defines us.  You don’t want to lose it.

In the 1962 film, Birdman of Alcatraz, Burt Lancaster's character, Robert Stroud, says, "Life is too precious a gift to waste it."  So, let's not.  

I remember as a child realizing for the first time that one day I would die.  It sent a chill up my spine.  Then I realized most probably that would only happen at some very far off unimaginable time.  I could relax.  Old people died.  I wasn’t an old person.  I was very young.  Then a friend from high school was killed in an industrial accident the summer after graduation.  Young people die, too.

For some period during my early life I maintained an irrational belief that special people, like me, could avoid the inevitable.  However, on June 11, 1979, I became convinced that everyone dies.  That was the day John Wayne succumbed to cancer. 

Some fear the pain of dying.  Some fear the great unknown of what will happen to us after we die.  To me, this is one of the reasons for religion, to provide us with answers for this great unknown.  However, what I fear is the end of a life that I am enjoying so much.  I want to keep going, for as long as possible.  I fear missing the day after I die, and the day after that.

I have always enjoyed the study of history.  It is fascinating to learn about what had been going on before I was born.  Take Abraham Lincoln.  Born in his family’s log cabin in Kentucky and died in a stranger’s house in Washington, D.C. fifty-six years later after taking a bullet to the brain from an assassin’s gun.  His life was over.  Eighty years later, I am born.  I study Lincoln's life. 

Now history includes the study of things that have transpired during my lifetime.  I remember where I was when John F. Kennedy died.  But, where was I when Lincoln died?  No, I didn’t exist.  That is a strange concept, not existing.  How could I, who has inhabited my body for over seventy-one years and have had thousands of experiences during that time, not exist at some point prior to my birth.  Not only at some point, but for millions of years before according to some. 

I believe that I was created accidentally, as we all are.  One day, most likely in November of 1944, my parents, those same people who died long ago, were engaged in a mutual (I hope) act of passion.  And then, it was like I won the mother of all lotteries.  I was conceived, one sperm beat out millions of others for the chance to invade a single egg and create my life.  I am so happy to have been created, but where was I the day before and the day before that?  The answer is nowhere.  And where will I be the day after my death?  The same place, nowhere.

Reading about history and really about books and movies of any kind has taught me that they all have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  That’s kind of like life.  It has a beginning, a middle, and end.  But does life have a final, final end?  Can we leave anything behind after our body dies to continue our life in some respect?  I love reading the books of Charles Dickens, whom I think is the greatest writer of the English language.  Who can forget, “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  When I read his books, it’s as if he is talking directly to me, even though he died one hundred forty-six years ago.  Perhaps future generations will read what I have written in this blog.

Another way that life goes on is through progênie.  I have, to date, two children and two grandchildren.  I hope they will carry my memory forward to future generations with personal anecdotes, vídeos, and photos.  I knew my mother’s parents, who emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States of America around 1904.  Subsequently, my mother’s mother’s father, a man named Gamsey Elkin, who was born around 1860, came, too.  I didn’t know him very well.  His English was not good and he suffered memory loss.  Who were his parents?  I don't know.  It’s as if they have disappeared.  It’s as if they never existed.  Nobody alive today remembers them.  I hope that doesn’t happen to me.

Perhaps of more importance than our memory is that our progênie pass forward our genes to future generations of descendants.  In that way, a part of you continues after your body dies.  Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln has no descendants still living today.  However, his memory will live forever in the history of our nation.  I would prefer that both my memory and my genes get past forward in perpetuity.  

The bottom line is to forget about death and live our life each day, each moment, as if death doesn’t exist.  That is basically how we live our lives.  That is the only sane way we can live our lives.  We don’t know when death will come.  We only know that it will.  There are no guarantees of future tomorrows.  So live today.  Carpe Diem!  Seize the Day!  Aproveite o Dia!