An End to It

Too old for blogging

Yet here you spew much nonsense

Death the only cure

It Got Real

Daily Writing Prompt: How does death change your perspective?

For me the real question is how has my perspective on death changed? As a child, I realized that living things died but I felt inoculated from my own death since I still had many decades in front of me.

As a young teen I experienced grief after the death of my cat. It took about three days for the pain to begin to subside. The death of no person in my life so far has inspired such grief.

The fear of nuclear war loomed large when I was young but it also remained abstract. In fact quite a few doomsday scenarios have passed by me. The Doomsday Clock has become just a soft, background tick. My guess is that the End is Near warning has been sounding for as long as humans existed.

About three years ago, I started to become hyper-aware of my own death. Literally my life flashes before my eyes as my mind rewinds images from my past. On an off chance, I may have a couple of decades in front of me. Now it’s less abstract.

I remain cheerful when I confront each new day. The same old daily routine of living is fine with me and I don’t desire much adventure. I’m happy to quietly contemplate life and in turn contemplate death.

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

“WWII veterans are dying at a high rate. Someone should do something about that.”

One of my coworker had said that to me years ago and it left me speechless. But she spoke with passion and certainty fighting the logic that death will win the game.

By September 2022, an estimated 160,000 World War II veterans will still be alive in the United States. Thousands die each month. Death comes to the aging soldiers that survived battle in their youth. Medical science fights bravely against death and hints at immortality within reach. So far the demise of death has been grossly exaggerated.

Is it possible to welcome death as it kindly comes for us? The more scientifically advanced we get, the more outrage we feel by the inevitable. Miracles are now the realm of science.

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