Raised vaguely Catholic, and exposed to all the “biggie” religions, I am now definitely a believer in non-belief.
I think this is it. I think you get this life, however long it lasts, and then it is over. Breathe in, breathe out, until you don’t anymore, because you’re wormfood. Which is good, because then the worms feed the birds and the birds feed other larger, more talon-y birds, and those birds get eaten by pumas and hippos and…
Yes, yes, too many nature documentaries recently (more on that at some point).
But being a devout non-believer doesn’t mean that I lack space for the magical and mysterious and the Bigger Than Us. Quite the opposite. I am chock full of wide-eyed wonder. It just means that instead of being awed and distracted by the Sky Bully, I am floored by the stars, and the volcanoes, and the cicadas that live for 24 crazy hours after 13 years underground.
I don’t put stock in the idea that any part of us persists after we’re gone. It would be nice, of course, to go to an ethereal cottage in the sky with my love and spend a comfy eternity curled up, sipping hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows, and shooting the breeze. But I don’t believe that is what happens. And for all the protests to the contrary, I believe that believing in an afterlife gives us tacit permission to doze through the time we have here — because we get a cloud and harp do-over when we’re gone.
So I appreciate people who can articulate what it means and how it feels when we come to an end, without cushioning it with a “better place” chaser. Such as the concise, beautiful and poignant sentence I recently read, which prompted this whole spiel (yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally arrived at The Point):
“The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.”
~from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (snagged from Neil Gaiman’s “Don’t Panic” biography on Douglas Adams)