Immortality

 

It is heartening to see the kind responses to my comment about the poem on death and transformation into nature. Grief has been far more intense and profound than anything I could have imagined only a few months ago. I say that having gone through the suicide, the death by AIDS, disease, and the murder of those I greatly loved who died too young.

I've heard, and now and then entertained, the notions of others about some form of immortality, from reincarnation to the elaborate schemes of the established religions. Those imaginations of immortality of some kind or another all appear to me as forms of wishful thinking, the inability to see the truth and simply accept it. Life is like the Buddhist Mandala, something beautiful, precious, and temporal. The effects of that life my be everlasting, as in a collective unconscious, or in its impact on other living beings. Let that be enough.

For me, grief has slowly and painfully taken me to the realization that my decades of marriage, love, and shared life in empirical reality with Darryl are over. His physical being is now the ashes in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chinese Vase in our living room. That makes it all the more valuable to me, the years of joy, of travel, of shared visions and ideas. We shared so much of our understanding of the world, our humanitarian views, our friends, our love of all the arts, of details of life, our love of tennis even, the "little things" of life.

My own life will come to an end soon enough. I am not a young man. I used to want to match Socrates and live until 70. I've passed that by almost 8 years. So, for what is left of it, I shall treasure my life with Darryl and what we accomplished together, without looking endlessly for signs of a ghost. I've seen those signs of others who are "gone." So if he appears when I do die, so be it. Surprise!

In the meantime, I expect nothing from death for either of us. Thank you, Epicurus for your wisdom, for a great celebration of empirical life with all of its wonder and plenitude. There is a bit more of that left for me, and I shall try to enjoy it-- despite the horrifying state of the world at present.

Which reminds me, only the present is actually real; all else, past and future, are imaginative projections, and sometimes, works of art.

Jameson