More
and more often, my body keeps reminding me that I’m getting old. No, not
“getting” old; I AM old. Every morning, Arthur Eyetis wakes me up and then
screams at me as I prop my weight on an arm to hoist my aching body out of bed.
The shoulder aches, the lower back moans, my feet tingle. I take two ibuprofen
every morning, along with a handful of other meds, and they keep me relatively
pain-free throughout the day. I feel like I’m relatively healthy compared to a
lot of the oldies I see at Safeway or at Hole-in-One, the restaurant where we
breakfast quite often. I see them shuffling to the restroom, tiny steps, backs
hunched over their walkers, faces contorted with the effort. But lately I
notice a sway in my gait, and the gait is a lot slower than it used to be. Now
that I’m an octogenarian, I’m thinking more and more about that exit door just
down the hall, with the green ripper behind it waiting for me. A little girl in
one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series overheard her parents talking
about the Grim Reaper and thought they were describing some green monster who
ripped people apart, thus the Green Ripper. I don’t envision any ripper or
black-cloaked figure with a scythe. I know death is a kind of farewell, a closing
down. But what comes after?
I
was a science fiction addict, so religious explanations of the universe never
made much sense to me. It was provable scientifically that our planet, Earth,
was a tiny insignificant little speck in the immensity of the universe, third
planet out from a tiny insignificant little star set way off in a corner of our
galaxy, the Milky Way, one of an infinite number of galaxies in the immensity
of time and space. That we could be the only intelligent life in that immensity
made no sense to me. I always believed that we created God in our own image,
not the other way around.
And as for our souls and what happens to us after we die, I always believed that we would live again in the next closest to us genetically. If I had one son, his mother and I would be combined psychically in that son. If we had more than one child, we would be spread out among them. But there would be a continued consciousness evolving and spreading out into the future. Walt Whitman said something like that in Leaves of Grass, that our individual spirit is one speck in an ocean of spirituality and that when we are born we are removed from that pool and placed here in this physical space for the length of our lives, to be returned to the spiritual pool when we die, to await our next time in life. Reincarnation, yes, but not involving insects and lesser animal species. But I take it one step further and believe the human connection must be more direct, a genetic connection, not a random placement. All life must be part of this creative force and all might be considered to be God or Godhead. I’m a part of it, everything that has life and motion is part of it. The physical substance of our universe isn’t part of it any more than the husks of our bodies are a part of it. When we die, the shell that held our spark of life returns to the substance from which it came. But the spark returns to the body of the life force—Whitman’s pool of spirituality.
And as for our souls and what happens to us after we die, I always believed that we would live again in the next closest to us genetically. If I had one son, his mother and I would be combined psychically in that son. If we had more than one child, we would be spread out among them. But there would be a continued consciousness evolving and spreading out into the future. Walt Whitman said something like that in Leaves of Grass, that our individual spirit is one speck in an ocean of spirituality and that when we are born we are removed from that pool and placed here in this physical space for the length of our lives, to be returned to the spiritual pool when we die, to await our next time in life. Reincarnation, yes, but not involving insects and lesser animal species. But I take it one step further and believe the human connection must be more direct, a genetic connection, not a random placement. All life must be part of this creative force and all might be considered to be God or Godhead. I’m a part of it, everything that has life and motion is part of it. The physical substance of our universe isn’t part of it any more than the husks of our bodies are a part of it. When we die, the shell that held our spark of life returns to the substance from which it came. But the spark returns to the body of the life force—Whitman’s pool of spirituality.
What
part does religion play in this? Most people would rather let religious leaders
do their thinking for them. They accept on faith what the church tells them,
the church’s explanations of life and death and good and evil and the nature of
the universe. Most of them are afraid of death and need the comfort of a social
organization to lessen their fears.
Where
do I stand on Christianity and the many churches that derive from it? I don’t go
to any church but I do believe in the humanity and teachings of Christ. I
believe that there is evil in the universe and that we have to combat it
through a universal or personal code of ethics, a morality we need to work at
and pass on to our children. Christ was a messiah, a messenger who brought that
code of ethics for us to follow. But he wasn’t a messenger from God. He wasn’t
the son of God. And he won’t be reappearing tomorrow or any tomorrow
thereafter.
Death
makes little sense to me. I’ve often thought, if there really is a God, that he
must be an unfeeling bastard, allowing the bestiality we read about in the
papers every day, allowing the unfair deaths and tragedies that occur all
around us. And cruelest of all, the span of our years is like some awful
practical joke. Just when we become skillful physically or mentally, just when
we’re able to answer most of the questions we asked throughout our lives, it’s
time to die. This is the plan of a God who pulls wings from flies. Fifty years ago, Peggy Lee made popular a song called “Is That All
There Is?” When I first heard it I thought it was the most cynical, despairing,
darkest set of lyrics I’d ever heard. It was, still is, but the words are
becoming more and more personal. Is that all there is? Just this ridiculously
short span of time without any meaning and then an eternity of nothing? I hope
not. But I guess I won’t really find out for sure until it’s too late to report
back to the living.
Life,
even though painfully short, beats the alternative. Even when we become so
weary we’d like to get off the train, we can’t. Somewhere I read that life is
like dancing with a gorilla. You don’t stop when you get tired, you stop when
the gorilla gets tired. So, like Peggy Lee, I guess I’ll just keep dancing.
Old A
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