On Life And Death; And Realizing The Difference

Some parents of a teenage son and 9-year old girl who attend my children’s school entered this past weekend probably thinking it would be just another weekend. By Saturday at noon, their teenage son was dead.  Gone. As a father, my heart aches for these people. I don’t know them, but that doesn’t make me grieve any less.  As the old saying goes, parents aren’t supposed to bury their children.  I have no earthly idea what I could say to these parents or to that little girl who lost her big brother if I had to comfort them.  It’s simply tragic.

George Carlin said that he wanted his epitaph to read, “Gee, he was just here a minute ago.”  That’s a funny line from a funny man.  But there’s a great big shining heap of truth in those words that we may sometimes lose sight of — often people are here and then — poof — they’re not.  No warning.  No deathbed gathering.  No vigils.  They’re just gone.

Now, this is a morbid, depressing line of thinking, but there’s a flip side.  If you’re reading this, you are alive. You may be sick, grumpy, angry, depressed, defeated, lonely, sad, downtrodden — you may even be crestfallen — but you are alive.  It’s worth repeating. You. Are. Alive.  That statement is not meant to be uttered gleefully in the face of tragedy. I don’t mean that we should flaunt that we’re not the guy who just hit the afterlife.  I simply mean that far too often we may not appreciate just how fleeting life can be.  It’s so easy to take it for granted.

And our speech almost makes it seem like death is really not real.  When we’re very tired, we’re dead tired. When we’re depressed, we feel like we’re dead to the world.  We have dead end jobs. We hit dead ends. We get brain dead. We get so sick that we just feel like we could die.  I’m not saying that we need psychoanalysis for depression if we use such phrases.  I’m simply saying that every now and then — and I’d bet more times than we currently do — we need to take a moment and realize, truly grasp, that we are alive.

No matter how bad the bills are, no matter how sick the sickness is, no matter how hopeless the future looks, we are alive.  Here in this moment, we are breathing and living.  There’s no guarantee we can say that next month, next week, tomorrow, or even in an hour. The simple fact that we are alive in this moment is worth being thankful for. And we don’t have to be greedy about it. If your friend, your spouse, your children, your parents, your kinfolk, your dog or cat is alive, be thankful.

I don’t fear death. I’m not worried about the afterlife.  But, from time to time, it hits me that I need to keep in mind that I am alive. No matter in what situation I find myself, I am alive. It’s not morbid to be thankful for your current breath because you know it could be your last.  It’s simply realizing how capricious life and death can be, and being cognizant of the difference.