Mortal

I'm going to die one day. My heart will still, and my blood will stop flowing, and my brain will cease firing electrical impulses, and my organs will shut down, and I'll die.

I've seen people go through it. And I know from my mother, who is a palliative care nurse, vaguely what it is like. And how ugly it can be.

I'm white, and by the standards of the world, wealthy. It means I'll probably live a while.

But, not forever.

Nobody has ever died before. People have different attitudes about it. Some see it as a gift, many a curse, others as part of a cycle, and others still as nothing particularly important.

You can fear it if you want. You can try and pretend that it won't ever happen to you, or that you're looking forward to it.

Some people (I am one of them) think that part of you, the part even perhaps that makes you YOU, continues to live after you die, and you go somewhere else. Others think that you turn into a different animal somehow, and live that life until it ends, and then turn into yet another one. Some others believe that nothing happens, that you cease, like a fire extinguished. But none of us can be sure.

I'll be honest. I really don't want to. I'm not keen for it at all. The very idea... Disturbs me.

I hope that when it happens to me, it's sudden. That the dread won't creep up, and I'll die laughing. Not soon please. Some years hence, but, sudden. A heart attack maybe. Or a brain aneurism that I don't even feel. Maybe I'll just go to sleep after a lovely day and night, and never wake up.

That's my wish. Obviously, I don't get a say, but that is certainly my wish.

Death, and the creeping knowledge of mortality seems to be a trait reserved only for intelligent animals, like humans, and perhaps other great apes, and almost certainly elephants, who morn their dead. Who knows what dogs dream of? But I know it isn't a wonder of when they'll end.

Live now, that's my advice, to you and me. Whatever it is that you do, do it. Because you won't be able to, always. That's what it means to be mortal.