La muerte

La muerte sounds so much more beautiful than the word death.

I think about death and dying every day; it' something I've done since being a child. It fascinates me at the same time it terrifies me. I am a master of dreaming up scenarios not unlike a director looking through his fingers imagining camera angles, scripts, and Oscar-worthy drama. I think I do this so that I will somehow be "prepared" should something tragic happen to a loved one. Which is so impossible, it's ludicrous. Sometimes I think I do it to be a bit of a masochist. But mostly I think it's because I would like to make peace with death so that I don't have to be afraid anymore.

However, death has his companion desire who makes it incredibly difficult to negogiate. Ever since the birth of my children I am incapable of witnessing any type of suffering, be it real or fiction, because it always spurs my maternal instincts and darkest fears. I don't own the rights to my children's souls, yet the thought of any of them passing during my lifetime is a way scarier thought than my own demise.

I do, however, believe in an afterlife. But I believe that that passage goes most smoothly when one can accept the trauma of dying. I think I would get a lot more out of life if I could stop worrying about death. Of course I think one should make responsible choices, and anyone who puts a child into this world OWES it to this child to ensure its safety and security. I really don't understand thrill seekers who challenge their mortality on a regular basis, so it's not like I'm looking to join their ranks should I manage to make any progress.

I had sort of a weird thought the other day about my father, who being old-fashioned and ultra-conservative has a lot of hateful views that I consider to be dead wrong. In my mental dialogue (I have a lot of those with my parents) I thought if he just waits and sees - when he's gone he'll see how wrong he was to hate and judge and then...and then, what? He'll see that he was wrong, and that will be that. No judgment day. No wraths of hell. Pure enlightenment.

So not only am I working on not being afraid of death, I am trying to realize that perhaps always being in the right isn't the most important thing either. After all, both are like cancer to the energy we could be using to live life to the fullest.

I think the Mexicans are onto something when they celebrate El día de los muertos (The day of the dead) and for one day a year equate death with festivities. And allow the souls that have passed to remain the same souls that walked the Earth - only having more fun afterwards.