Original Publication Information:
Suedomsa the Magazine November 1997 Volume One,
Issue Four
The Happy Article by Dara Shifrer
Death has never been the stuff of my nightmares, but lately it's become a
bit of a worry. I used to enjoy hearing myself say, "Death doesn't scare
me." That's the truth, the ending of my life won't be a horrific thing.
Death is kind of what makes it all bearable, the big
well-at-least-it's-not-forever. It's the eternity that worries me -
millions of years after a long hundred on this world. Despite heaven
being the place where I'd be a swirling glow of colors eating caramels and
mint candies, I can't see an eternity of any sort of ecstasy being forever
ecstatic. The idea of existing forever and forever makes me shudder and
itch. There are days when the only way I see is dirt gray, and then death
is The End. Death is the day when your chemical-ran self is decomposed
and transformed into other forms of energies. But on my silly days, death
in reincarnation. Rather than transforming into a woodpecker or
cockroach, I'd transform into a fresh wet human baby and try the whole
thing one more time. Heaven's over-played and reincarnation is definitely
my favorite, but most of the time I'm scared the only reasonable answer is
that we end.
I'm a month and 14 days away from official adulthood, and it's the
strangest thing to be entering a world that wasn't mine for so long. I
can feel my whole generation half being pushed and half running towards
the world that is official. A child's world revolves in a small circle
around his/her head, but the adult's world is a collective whole which is
analyzed and recorded and remembered. When I see old friends from high
school, we always go through the chain of stories we've heard about old
classmates. After a couple of years, the stories got astoundingly Real.
Lots were traveling, two people had died, four had AIDS, some were
committing crimes, and hundreds were married. It used to be only the kids
who had freaky things happen to them that made the newspapers, but
suddenly the everyday stories of our local paper were including my people.
Like it or not, I became a pertinent member of national society. Then I
realized I had just as much of a chance of making the paper. And it
wouldn't really be unusual or astounding. I'd just be the little
paragraph in the obituary column.
So if I watch too much news and begin to dwell, I can picture myself being
smashed by a brake-free Chevy or slashed by a killer with nothing else to
do that day. Various body pains add up to major disease, and all of my
bad habits are really going to be the stifling of me. Growing old is
suddenly abhorrent to me. Not to mention watching my days of
irresponsibility being sucked away, death is often walking slowly but
surely right into the end of my life. It's been said that we are born
only to die. While I don't notice it so much I won't mind, but when body
parts begin to fail and my mind becomes stale oatmeal I hope there is some
redemption in it. Maybe old age is gorgeous in wisdom and understanding.
Maybe death is worth the pain because of the afterlife. But maybe there's
a screeching inky black shadow demon (Ghost?) waiting to pounce on me by
7-Eleven.
