Atheist Musings on Death

**Disclaimer: I am an Atheist and this post completely supports that. I have tried to be respectful about my feelings about other belief systems, but if you have a problem with me firmly describing any belief in an afterlife or God as fiction, then I would recommend that you skip this post. I am always open for debate as long as it is respectful, however, so comments are appreciated.**

 

 

I'm terrified of my parents dying. The hardest thing for me as an Atheist is dealing with death. I've been frightened of death since I was a little girl. My parents raised us Agnostic, and they were very open with us about what may or may not happen after death. As a logical-minded kid, I took their presentation of various options (heaven, reincarnation, spirit or soul living on, ghosts, or nothingness) and deduced that the most likely scenario was nothingness, and thus began a lifetime of panic attacks whenever I considered it. When I finally lost someone I loved, my grandfather, I was 21 and it wrecked me for a long time.

Since then, I've come to a slightly better place and am continuing to try and face the fearful thoughts of death and find more comforting ways to think about it, so that when my parents DO inevitably pass away, hopefully I will be able to grieve in a healthy way. I think we all have to find that way for ourselves. 

 

But something that I have realized in losing other friends and family, and experiencing my own grief vs. the grief of those around me who believe in an afterlife of some kind, is that while they are focused on seeing the departed in the afterlife, and them being "in a better place," etc - all of those religious traditions and behaviors around the whole practice of death seem, to me, to be holding onto

• the idea that the person is not actually gone, which means you don't completely move on  
• also keeping in your memory and immediate experience the memory of how the departed passed, rather than how they lived
• an almost artificial set of shared emotions based on social expectations rather than a natural and healthy progression of letting go.

I see people, year after year, share images of parents and grandparents on their deathbeds and custom-made bumper stickers honoring the deaths of mothers more than 20 years prior, and if it gives them comfort to keep their memories this way, then I can certainly respect that. But I prefer my method of mourning. 

 

I laugh at funerals. I tell funny stories of my grandpa's off-color comments when I was a little girl who didn't understand what he was saying (my mother gasping in the background "Don't SAY things like that to her, Daddy!"). 

 

When my dad passes away, my sister will mourn deeply for the rest of her life, and may find comfort in the idea of an afterlife where she will see him again, and will probably have a shrine of some sort in her house to him. She will obsess over his last days, however they end up going, and what could have been done differently and if, if, if... she will not let go, ever. I want to keep the memory of the living, vibrant man that he is and has been alive, though. 

 

I don't want to focus on his death or on the fact that he's gone; I'll want to tell my son about the time he grounded me because my mom was mad at me, but then took me out for ice cream and explained that mom wasn't always right or rational. The time he took me aside before college and told me he would miss me the most of his kids, because he didn't need to worry about me since I had a good head on my shoulders. When I was four and asked him if he believed in God, and he thought about it for a long moment while I waited, studying his chocolate-brown eyes and the furrow between his bushy black eyebrows, until he said "No, I don't. I believe in aliens, though." I considered that response - a far more interesting one than I had expected, since in asking my mom the same, the response had been a simple "Yes," then began to ask questions. I will remember that, and I will remember him explaining to me, 32 years later, how he began to question his faith seriously as a teenager, when a landslide in England killed 26 small children - an entire generation - and as the town mourned and he heard over and over again "God's will" and other empty phrases, he began to rage at the idea of a God who would do that, and to wonder how he had ever believed in God at all. I'll remember the feel of his leathery cheek under my lips as I said goodbye to him the last time, whenever that may be. It may be that it was yesterday, as I helped him and my mom into their car at the end of their visit to see us. We have reached that point where every time could be the last time; though, to be honest, we are all, always, at that point. 

I question a lot of things, including my disbelief in God. I think that if I did not question it, there would be a problem. But I always come back to logic, to reason, to science, like it's my center C on the piano. 

 

A former coworker's daughter, who is just a year older than my son, was a sassy, strong, healthy little girl four months ago. Within a matter of two days, that changed completely, and she is now dying of an inoperable brain tumor. I had a crisis of faith, which is only natural when looking at the sweet face of that poor little girl, so like my own sweet son, and my heart broke that she will never grow up and that this could just as easily happen to us. 

 

In an instant, everything can change. A cell mutates, a tired driver pushes on instead of stopping for a coffee, something snaps in someone's brain and they open fire, someone slips and instead of falling painfully and embarrassingly to the floor, their head hits a corner. And for a moment, when these things happen, my brain wants so desperately to make sense of it all, to believe in a higher purpose or plan, to believe that they aren't gone or that missing them is a temporary thing.  

 

It's so tempting. 

 

But, for me, far better to live life fully knowing it's the only one I will get, to love fiercely with more than my heart, and to keep the memories of all those people I've loved and lost alive and pass some of that on to the next generation, because the only immortality in this world is through the stories we share.