Trigger Warning: Death

I have been thinking about death lately; not morbidly—or in a state of existential angst. Just death:

Meaning, preparation, childhood teachings, philosophy, religion.

It didn’t really register until a few weeks ago, that my entire childhood—in many ways—sidestepped death and left me ill-prepared to have healthy self-dialogue.

I have a most vivid memory of my “sleeping” on my grandmother’s couch while she and my mom discussed The Second Coming. It’s nearness; the doubt we’d outlive this promised reckoning. I was eleven. Even if somehow they didn’t make it to this doorway in eternity, I would. It went birth, life, eternity in heaven.

Of course, like others who heard hellfire and brimstone messages from an impressionable age, I was also familiar with the terrifying possibility that I would die suddenly—just after a lustful thought; or a moment of pride; or another misstep from the long list of Sins. In that case, it went birth, life, death, instant separation from everyone I loved—while screaming in a cauldron of molten lava; Satan cackling with glee.

I also knew that if I kept my mind pure and my heart right with God, death would be an immediate transition into heaven—with God and angels and loved ones and streets of gold. (And apparently, PURE gold was transparent, which led me to believe that those suffering in the bowels of Hades, might also be looking up. Just an extra dosage of torment to complement their fiery shrieks of existential terror. At least in this scenario, it went birth, life, death, entry to Glorious Life Forevermore.

So I sit here now, in my mid-forties with the philosophical maturity of a teenager as it relates to the thought of a probable Nevermore; my slow return to dust. I have been reading Stoic philosophy lately, and in that ancient writing, I’m finding at least a framework to arrange my thoughts. To unpack my own reckoning with The Inevitable:

Nothingness.