Death

Is by no means amusing. Not in reality

Sure as a society we try to ease ourselves into the fact that the end result for all of us is quite the same, which is a one way ticket to six feet below the earth. Or scattered above, depending on whether a person decides on cremation. However, it's all the same right? The great sleep is it. We have shows like Dead Like Me that attempt to show a fun alternative to the fire & brimstone or glowing wings & clouds, Christian alternatives. We have books like the Darwin Awards that poke fun at the very act of dying; after all, if a person is stupid enough to earn a spot in the book, then self selecting themselves out of the gene pool was the least they could do.

However, the sad truth is... No one is ever prepared for death. Not when it happens to someone you know. It rarely matter whether you personally no the person who's died. Case in point when famous people die, if they were well liked there is generally a sense of mourning among the public. Example? Bea Arthur dying on Saturday. I loved the Golden Girls and was deeply saddened by her death. Another example? When a cousin you weren't particularly close to dies.

As apparently, mine has. Last Friday in fact. I found out today. It's crazy because, as I said we weren't close. He was from the age bracket above mine. But I'm saddened by it.

When I think about all of this: all of the shows, the jokes, and the books, dedicated solely to the topic... I find I sometimes find it hard to believe that most people have never been to a funeral for someone they knew, let alone a family member. To contrast that with myself... As a person who's been to... quite a bit more then a few, from quite a young age... with most of them having been for family members... I don't know. It's a bit sad, to put it mildly.

It's also a bit ostracizing. To have experienced that much... Loss, I guess you can call it... You look at the world differently. You live differently. It becomes hard to deal, to live. Because, when you are so often faced with your mortality through the loss of family member's... It becomes hard to focus on the mundane. On the minor things of life that are actually necessities. Life becomes something of an urgency. You find yourself either filled with the desire to live as much as possible in each day... Or you succumb to the hopelessness of it all. Either way, life is one extreme or the other. And my family is shrinking rapidly.

But enough of that.

Cake or Death?