[lit-ideas] Re: Imagining Death
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:08:48 -0700
Eric wrote
...I hear furious trumpeting from above. Looking up, I see something
that resembles a growing storm cloud. Finis. The worst thing about
my imagined death is the sense of things left undone. Pain I can
deal with. It's nothing new. But the end of possibility is unnerving.
Any thoughts? How do you guys imagine your death?
When I was a child, and a very long time ago that was, I used to
imagine being bombed or strafed by a German Stuka dive bomber like
those that were shown in newsreels gunning down poor folks with their
carts and luggage who were trying to flee some other terror. This was
a real fear, for it didn't occur to me that the Stuka could not reach
Western Oregon without satanic help.
In the last four or five years I've had occasion to be 'put to sleep'
with general anesthesia. One instant you're there; the next instant
you're not. There is no 'experience' of becoming not there. You just
aren't. I did not note the transition because there was none. Of
course, I'm able to report this because after a time I was 'there'
again, surrounded by looming shapes uttering sounds, which after a
short time became people saying my name.
I know that there are different experiences of being sedated or
anesthetized, e.g., those in which one undergoes something like the
waking experience I just mentioned, run backwards. But for me, it was
as if a switch had been clicked to 'off,' instantly and completely. I
did not 'come back' from the 'absence,' for I had no experience of
being in it.
I believe that this is how it is with death, no matter how one dies.
One may die in agony, or wrapped in a cocoon of morphine, but in the
end it's all the same. Death is not part of life; it is the end of
life. It is hard for nonbelievers like me to think about it beyond that.
My fear of flying has come back.
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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