I had an unusual honor this past week while meeting up with some friends at a little pub just north of nowhere. I had just gotten my beer, when I overheard a short, bearded man talking. "You know what's fucked up?" he said to a stranger, "I just found out today that I have leukemia. I'm dying."
This guy had been hovering by the door since I walked in. He wasn't drinking. He wasn't surrounded by a crew of friends. He wasn't brooding in some corner, like he wanted to be left alone. He stood beside the rivers of passing people, and just grabbed an acquaintance at random to tell them this news. He was alone. He wasn't just dying, he was fading away. I had to talk to him.
Within a few brief sentences, I had the bulk of the story. He was diagnosed with leukemia earlier that day. If you're reading this the day I'm posting it, then he's likely beginning his chemotherapy right now. However, the doctors have told him that there is little they can do. He was given eight months to live.
What would you even do with that? I know, people often have wild fantasies about how they would live if they knew they were about to die. You'd do anything you want. You'd party for months. You'd burn out in a blaze of glory. That's all very cute coming from someone who isn't stamped with an expiration date.
Now imagine that you're still a real human being. You still have your insecurities. You still have your subtle desires and varying levels of ambition. But now, you will be dead in less than a year. You're not living like someone who pretends there's no tomorrow. You're living like someone who knows there isn't.
Will that pint of whiskey be fun? Maybe... probably not. But who cares? What's the point of "living it up" when you're dying? Fast cars and a carefree life are still just embers in a fire pit the morning after, and you'll be gone. People will get in their cars, they'll drive away in every direction, and it will blur to an abstract, empty memory.
I tried to think of things to say to this guy. I wondered what I would want someone to say to me. I have to admit, this guy was tough as nails. I've never seen someone on the brink of tears for so long without falling one way or the other.
But what do I say? Death and I have always had a strange relationship; like an unwanted houseguest, lingering around by my side. Do I tell this guy the things I've learned of death? Do I tell him how the living will handle it? Do I tell him what to expect as the world shrinks, and fades to black?
Unfortunately, common folk don't like my view of the afterlife. I don't weave fanciful tales of utopia, or streets of gold. I offer no reassurance that you will somehow remain "you" once you've left the confines of your body.
Death is the end of this world. It's the final chapter of your individual life. You will no longer exist. That part is plainly obvious.
However, I also don't hold condemning thoughts of existential oblivion. I am not one to say, "You're dead, and that's it." This is because it is also plainly obvious to me that we are more than just dancing molds of meat. Whether or not we know what to call it, there is something more to life than just the bodies that carry it around. When I close my eyes, I know that I extend further than my simple brain. When I speak to someone, I can feel that there is more in them than if I were talking to a cheeseburger.
Energy cannot be destroyed. It can move. It can change form, but it must continue on. What awaits us when we die is far more elegant than ashes. It is more beautiful than a backwater, mundane projection of "perfection" by human standards. It is not a recreation of this world with all the pain taken away.
But he was a simple man, with simple needs. He had never dug too deeply into this life, and any understanding of its meaning would have taken him more than 8 months to explore. In the end, I just told him to think of it as leaving for Disneyworld. It's certainly not true, and I don't know that it gave him comfort.
He said that he'd be back after his funeral, and that we could have a beer together. I told him I'd be waiting.
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