Love & Death

First, I'd like to thank JB & BPW for their kind words regarding my last post. We all eventually go through loss, and knowing that we are ultimately not alone in suffering makes it easier to get through it. Thank you.

Now personal work begins. So far, I haven't really started to deal with my grandmother's death. I've been avoiding deep contemplation about it because I know that during the viewing on Thursday and the funeral on Friday there will be nothing BUT dealing with it. Until then, I'm going to live in emotional stasis.

I grew up Catholic and attended a Parochial school for 7 years. After I graduated college I started to lose my faith, but I started dating a Catholic girl of a VERY Italian Catholic family and kept that faith going for a few more years. It wasn't until the late 90's, with a greater understanding of science, reasoning and human nature, that I really started to doubt the existance of God.

I've written on all of this before, but this is the first time since my current philosophy that I've had to deal with the death of someone important to me. I've surrounded myself, just by dumb luck association, with a number of friends who share a similar view with me on the myth of the afterlife. Most of them had gone through their "What is the point of living? How do I deal with death?" phases when they were young, so the typical reply when I ask them, "How do you face death?" is "There's nothing I can do about it, so why think about it." It has never been very comforting, but the words of my religious friends fall completely flat on me.

I used to find the Family Circus version of of life & death made sense (although I never thought it was very funny). Now it's just a myth, along with the Crying Madonna that has hit the news again this week. If it keeps people from being to wrapped up in grief, maybe there is some good in believing the lie. It isn't my reality, however.

My grandmother was 92 and in a great deal of pain. I think she mentally prepared herself for the end. I can at least find solace in that. I wish there were meaning in life. I wish there were a "world without end" for the lives of everyone but the Hitlers and such, but the only truth I have is that my life is now, and this is the only chance I have to spend time with people I care about. Bruce Springsteen has said often that he treats everyday like it is his last. I'm going to listen to a of Bruce's songs: Reason to Believe, My Father's House, the Price You Pay & Wreck on the Highway, then I'm going to work on my own way to find comfort by thinking about the kind of person my grandmother was, and how she made my father into the great person that he is.