On Dying

My grandfather died shortly before my 8th birthday. It was my first exposure to death. Before that I knew it only in theory and my young brain couldn't quite understand it. I knew that when someone died they didn't come back around to say hello but beyond that the whole concept was a little hazy. So when my parents told me my grandfather, who I called Pop-Pop, had died, I cried because I was sad that I wouldn't see him again. Yet I can't say I really knew what that meant. I had a vague notion of heaven but nothing concrete.

Let's flash forward to this past May. A friend of mine died. I'd known him for a little while and he'd been battling diabetes. He had to have his leg amputated and was fixed with a replacement. Either because the replacement was broken or because he simply wasn't used to walking with it yet, my friend fell and bashed his head open. That killed him.

Now I knew no one in my friend's family and I guess they didn't look through his phonebook so I wasn't contacted right away. I found out a week and a half later. In the time between his death I sent my friend two text messages asking how he was doing. He didn't reply because, well, he was dead and all. In hindsight it was an odd thing. I was talking to a dead man.

I'm an atheist so I've no use for ideas about the afterlife or ghosts or angels. However, having my friend die did force me to wonder what his life meant and if his death had any sort of meaning. I think it's clear that his death had meaning for those around him but for him it had no meaning at all. He's dead and gone now; his life is done. He died way too young.

But let's say he hadn't. Let's say he died at 100. Or, to make it even more personal, let's say I died at 100. Is that a tragedy? Is death really so bad when you've lived for so long? A life being cut short is horrible but is a life that never ends just as bad?