My Thoughts on Death

Having worked at a nursing home for four years previously, I feel I am detached from the idea of death.  I grew attached to my residents while I was there.  I felt like I was helping them live better lives.  Some of them I looked to like additional grandparents.  However, when a resident did pass away, I usually learned during the busiest times of work.  Usually, the conversation would go, "Oh, that's said.  I'll miss them.  Well, these dishes have to get done now."  I know that sounds terrible, but that's the kind of mindset I've been in for a very long time.

People die.  Life goes on.  That's how it happens.  That's how it's always happened, and that's how it's going to continue to happen.  Nothing can change that (short of a nuclear blitzkrieg).  I have no problem with the mourning process.  It's healthy.  It's necessary.  You need to mourn, but you also need to celebrate the lives that people lived.  Don't linger over the fact that they aren't here and that they had so much to live for.  Instead, enjoy the time you did spend with them and remember the joy they brought you.

Now, I don't know what happens after everything goes kaput and we die.  I don't think I want to know until it happens.  I personally don't believe in the great pearly gates of heaven that everyone goes up to.  And I don't know that I believe there is a place beneath our feet that souls are tortured in.  I think I'm too much of a realist to believe in that stuff.  I see the things in front of me, and those are real.  Abstract ideas like heaven (and imaginary numbers, but that's off topic) are just too far for me.  I want to believe in reincarnation, but even that seems a bit out there.  Strangely enough, I don't have much of a problem with not knowing.

Frankly, death doesn't scare me.  Going out does.  It could be in a whole slew of ways that could be terrifying, or painful, or peaceful, or a million other extremes.  But the actual dying does not scare me.  What am I going to care?  I'm dead!  Sure there may be people to mourn when I'm gone.  But again, that's not my concern.  I'm dead.  Life is going to go on and people are going to continue living their lives.  That may sound cynical and apathetic, but I really just don't care.  Yes, I have a lot of things I want to do with my life, and I hope I get to do most of them (knock on wood), but I'm not afraid to say, well, look at all the stuff I didn't get to do in my lifetime.  That sucks.  Because it does suck.  But you know what, I've done a lot of great stuff in my life too.  Granted, it wasn't memorable or life changing to the greater world, but to me it was.  And frankly, I am okay with that.

So yeah.  Like I said.  This blog is going to get real!  Sorry if I bummed anyone reading this out.  Here's a gif of a baby hugging puppies to make you feel better.

Hot Diggity Dog,

Brian