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I used to believe that I would go to heaven when I died. Later I realized that this meant some people would go to heaven, and some people would go to hell... and eventually, I stopped believing in the whole thing. Didn't seem very fair.
I still don't know what will happen, and probably never will. But in order for me to make the most of my life from moment to moment, I have to believe that nothing will happen when I die. That in one instant I will be alive, the person that I have spent many years becoming, and hopefully surrounded by people whom I love, and who have loved me, in that particular body... and in the next instant, I will become a pile of decaying organic matter. I am afraid of what happens in between those two instants. Not the pain, but the letting go of life. Will I be able to do it? What if I am unconscious, knocked out by morphine or other pain medication (as is often the case with cancer)? What if I don't even realize that I am ceasing to live?
That's what happened to my grandmother. She didn't die in pain, because she was so numb from the morphine. I almost think I would prefer the former, just to be alive and conscious as long as possible. But seeing her dead body laid out in a coffin, and then watching that dead body and coffin being pushed into a warehouse-sized crematory... and come back to us in a jar... well, there is no better metaphor than "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran
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