Thoughts on death

What of death?  One thing we can say with surety is not one of us will escape it.  What is it like when you die?  Clearly, we cannot know.  However we have seen animals and people die.

Most of the deaths of animals in the wild that I have witnessed have ended in calm submission.  Not all, so that is not to say there is no pain in death, but in most cases there is a peaceful letting go at the end.

There is acceptance and an element of tranquillity. Is this why people are executed in painful ways?  You would think that if a society decided to deprive someone of their life, they could at least do so “humanely”, but the electric chair, painful injections, and other unpleasant forms of execution still exist, even in what some regard as a “civilised” country. The passing away doesn’t look nasty enough, so they try every imaginable means to prolong death, and overwhelm this moment of peace with pain.

I don’t want to delve too deep into something I know nothing about, and can only guess at.  While I find this interesting, I consider it a diversion, as it is a matter I can only be ignorant about until the day I die. Nevertheless, how strange that there should so often be this calm at the end!  When we are undergoing what we (man and animal) fear most.  Why?

Should this not be an important question?  I am sure many religions have an answer to this question. Your soul has left you. You have begun another life.  But I prefer to focus on nature, and what I hear, see or smell.  Of course Science tells us that in many cases you lose blood, which lowers oxygen levels to the brain.  That should make you weak and dizzy.  Most of us have been in that situation, even just by lying down and quickly standing up, or when we have a fever. Initially what we normally worry about becomes irrelevant. Later we might not be fully aware of our surroundings.

What happens next?  Well, it seems that after that last bit of calm the light goes out.  You die.

I think it is odd that often there is tranquillity just before.  It suggests to me that the worst thing about dying must be not knowing what is happening, and not being prepared.  We always want a few more years, days, hours, minutes, seconds.  There are things we wanted to do.  Things left undone.  And we never planned to die.

If there is relaxation before that last moment, why the struggle before?  

I think the struggle before is all about what I call “the game of life”.  It is the most serious game we ever play, and at the end of it I imagine myself thinking that it all seems so pointless and so irrelevant.  Hence my choice of the word “game”.