"ABOUT DEATH AND DYING"
By Joseph J Kusnell for Boomeryearbook.com
Whenever I say to someone, "I am dying", the usual response is, "aren’t we all?" And of course that’s true. The moment we are born is the moment we begin to die. But in my case, it is far more imminent than most of those to whom I am speaking.
I have a fatal lung disease known as Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, a disease that leads to deterioration of the lungs. The lungs simply become less and less able to function and in time you suffocate. It’s not a pretty thought.
IPF, as it is called, has a greater mortality at five years than do most cancers. Mayo Clinic says the mortality rate at five years is 80 %. The medium life expectancy is just 28 months. For those who are diagnosed with IPF, it is a death sentence. Where most people are unsure as to when they will die, patients with IPF can be quite sure – very soon. So I face death in the near future. How do I deal with that?
Well, to begin with, although I am not certain how I will face the business of dying, death itself holds no specter for me. You see I understand death. I was dead for the first five billion years of this planet’s existence. I was dead when the mythical Homer wrote the Iliad twenty-eight hundred years ago, when the Romans ruled the world two thousand years ago, when the English settlers came to Jamestown four hundred years ago. I was dead when George Washington lead the colonial forces against England, when America fought the War of 1812, when we fought the civil war, when Woodrow Wilson was President, when my mother and father were born. In truth, I have been dead for 99.999% of all the time man has walked on this planet and even before that. It has been correctly written: "life to eternity is as a raindrop to a tropical storm". We are ‘dead’ far, far longer than we are alive.
When I have time to reflect on all this, I think about all the people that I have known who are no longer with us. My sister, who was killed with two others in a terrible automobile accident when she was just 21 years old, my mother and dad, my cousins and friends. Lots of them have gone as I will go shortly. Death is nothing special and it’s not even hard to do. Sooner or later everyone gets to do it. In the history of this world, over twenty billion people have lived and died. Each of them existed for a time and then ceased to exist for eternity. It’s the way the system works, nothing mystical about it. As an ant ceases to exist the moment you step on it, so do we all cease to exist the moment we die. It is therefore important to understand that dying is not important, what is important is how you die and the emotional well being of those you leave behind. Those are the things that matter.
To worry about death or what happens after death is to waste your time and energy. It is at the very least, pointless. For one thing, every living creature must die. There is no other option of which I am aware. As for what happens after we are dead, well basically nothing happens after we are dead exactly as nothing happened for all those years before we were born. I can attest to this from personal experience. Not long ago I suffered a massive heart attack and 'died'. I was resuscitated and brought back and the first question I was asked was: "what did you see". Sadly I had to report, "nothing. I was here, then I was not here, than I was here again." The assembled nurses were disappointed. They were hoping for a bright light and a long tunnel, at the least.
But what about life after death, you ask? I reply there is no life after death, we made that up so we wouldn’t have to confront dying. There is no heaven (sad) or hell (glad), no angels (sad) or devils (glad). Life is the name we give to existence and death is the name we give to non-existence. It is no more complicated than that.
But though there is no life following death, there may be something else, something truly incredible, almost beyond our understanding. Let me explain.
All things are created from energy. The Earth, the sky, birds and clouds, raindrops and rivers, yes even us, are simply physical manifestations of energy. The Cosmos (home of the universes) is eternal – it exists without beginning or end. The Cosmos is in a constant state of building and tearing down and rebuilding and since energy is required for creation and since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it is obvious that energy for re-building must come from somewhere. I believe it comes from the recycling of old energy. I believe that includes the recycling of the energy that was once you and I along with the Earth that once was our home. It is all recycled.
The process is simple. We die and we are buried and slowly the ground reclaims us. In time, our planet will also die. It will roam the universe cold and dark slamming into first one celestial body and then another until, after a great time, it is reduced to rubble. That rubble is then drawn into a black hole (natures trash compactors) which compresses the matter and converts it essentially to radiation energy. That energy then escapes through the event horizon back into the Cosmos. (Ashes to ashes and dust to dust?)
So the energy that is you and me, and the clouds and the rain, and the birds and the bees and all things animate and inanimate that live on our Earth sooner or later will be returned to the cosmos for recycling. Not once but many times over throughout all eternity until all things are, or have been, a part of all things. It takes eons of course but eons are what the cosmos has plenty of. This recycling gives each of us eternal life - after a fashion.
So it must be and so it will be.
I apologize to those who believe in an after-life and will, like you, hope that I am wrong and you are right. It would be a beautiful thing - although it seems to be me to present even more questions than it answers. At the moment I deal with two more crises. My son-in-law who is just 47 has Phase 4(b) head and neck cancer and is terminal. My son who is 43 has PNH, a fatal blood disease. In all my long life, I have never known so many young people to be so sick. Something is wrong here.
Good luck to Brenda and all that suffer.
Joey
Where people come to exercise their minds:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/00659050837324784709
"ON CROSSOVER CRACKPOTS"
Recently I have had occasion to meet what I call "crossover-talkers", people who 'cross over' to the other side and talk to the dead. Now there are, in my opinion, two types of 'crossover-talkers'. The first are honest people who are simply the product of their own delusions or mental illnesses and the other are scam artists or charlatans who prey on the weak and gullible at the time of their bereavement.
The scam artist claims to be able to 'cross over' and talk to the dead inferring that dead people continue to have their faculties after they die which is a nice way of saying that they're not really dead at all, just displaced. This of course also infers that there are some twenty billion of these displaced dead people wandering around the firmament waiting for the 'cross talker' to contact them, usually for a fee.
Since the 'crossover-talker' is the only one claiming to hear these voices from the other side (which is absolute nonsense), we can conclude that most of them are crooks out for an easy buck. (It is either that or he or she is simply demented.)
The loss of a loved one is extremely traumatic for everyone and anyone who would take advantage of such a situation is indeed a low life. Obviously death is hard to accept but that's just the way it is. And no, you aren't coming back and you aren't sending messages, not through Western Union and certainly not through these 'crossover-crackpots'.
Save your money and give it to charity. 'Cross talkers' are a scam.
