Finite Creatures

I’ve always wanted to do one of these Daily Post prompts, but no one idea suggested there has ever spoken to me like this one. I may be a couple days late, but I don’t really care. I like the topic. Well, I don’t like it, but it speaks to me.

Hubbie and I were talking about this very thing the other day: death.

It’s not something unfamiliar in our house, especially with the fairly recent loss of a loved one.

I was telling Hubbie about one of my earlier memories. I was about 4 or 5, and had just gone to bed, with my lamp light shining softly beside me. My parents were still up and about, doing those night time things that parents do, that I now do at the end of the day: cleaning, tidying up, preparing for tomorrow. Amidst all this, I started to cry, really heavily.

My Dad came in. And when he asked me what was wrong, I said “I don’t want to die.”

I don’t remember what prompted this sudden outburst of sadness, of desperation to cling to life forever. I was crying, sad that one day I was gonna die, sad that one day my parents were gonna die. I don’t know if I’d just seen something in a movie, whether my parents had been to a funeral that day, or what. What I remember quite clearly though, despite the many years between then and now, was the sinking, agonising feeling, the realisation that one day it would all be over. My Dad tried to comfort me, and eventually I fell asleep, feeling helpless.

Imagining life without your loved ones is heartbreaking. Imagining life, where you’re not in it… is mind-boggling. Death is something we don’t understand, and many people don’t want to. Yet it’s something we will all experience, as we witness loved ones leave, and then eventually, we will be the star that ends our own show.

My take on it has always been the same. Glass half-full gal here now, but I’ve always believed there is another side. Life after death, where our soul continues, our body having been left behind on earth. In earth. You can say it’s a coping mechanism, you can say I have no proof, you can say it’s a load of bull.

And you may be right. But it’s what I believe. And it helps me to turn off my lamp light at night.