We are surrounded by death. Anywhere life can be found death will eventually be. Death is not ugly, it is not evil and it does not actively look to take life.

Death is just life ceasing. When someone dies, afterwards they are considered to be dead.

It is not quite true. A person does not do dying. Dying is not a verb. Dying is not an activity. Living is. A person can be crying, flying or lying. But they cannot be dying. You are alive, then you are not. Death is simply to not be alive.

To be dead is also a strange thing to call someone. You can only be something when you are alive, like sleepy or hungry or sad. A living person cannot be dead. So nobody really dies. They just stop being alive. Their bodies stop moving. The hart stops. Breathing ceases. The brain stops processing sensory input and it stops controlling the body.

The actual person that occupied the body leaves. This is the real problem. What happens to the person when the body stops being alive?

There are so many different views, views that were formulated by those still alive, trying to cope with the fact that someone they loved are no longer alive. Not a single dead person gave any insight. This makes sense of course, because there are no dead people. Just those that are no longer alive. It is cumbersome to always say ‘those that are not alive’, so we created a word to convey that meaning. That word being ‘dead’.

Using this word makes talking about not being alive easier, but it fucks with our minds.

It makes the condition final. It establishes permanency. ‘John is dead’ sounds so much more final than saying ‘John is no longer alive’.

When you are here and John is over there, out of sight, we do not mind. But when John is over there and dead we mind a lot! What is the difference? In both cases John is elsewhere. What changed was our mind. John is now dead. Dead to us. And it hurts!

Maybe there is another way. Can we not just stubbornly hold on to the connection we used to have with John? Can we not accept that John as we knew him is still John as we know him? He is just elsewhere, out of his body, still being John. The body we miss and cry about is just an empty shell, John’s old home, no longer John.

It feels to me that the sting of death can heal faster when we mourn the loss of a useful body, but celebrate the life that once occupied it, realizing it is just somewhere else, and eventually we too will go there.

I am not suggesting that losing a loved one is not traumatic and painful. I have experienced this first hand in my own immediate family; my father, a brother and more recently two infant grandchildren.

It still hurts, but life goes on.

For eternity. Hold on to that.