The View from Now

When I was about 16, my Mom informed me that my grandparents had requested we bring them an urn from Thailand. For what purpose, I wondered. Well, they were thinking about dying, and wanted a final resting place for their ashes.

I was devastated, and immediately sent them what was probably an inappropriate email in which I asked, "So you're dying? How do you feel about that?"

Ten years later, I still have both my grandparents, alive and well as can be expected. My grandfather mentions every so often that they've just lost another friend from the Senior Center and well, her husband used to ride to work with him or they played pool together for a long time.

My grandfather is almost 90, survived World War II when so many friends did not, worked hard all his life, and smoked like a chimney for decades. He is on oxygen 24-7, and perhaps is transitioning into the end of all things. It's a curious position to be in, I think. It's one I want to understand through his eyes. How does it feel to know that someday soon that conscious being you've lived with for 90 years is going to up and leave? And that it means you simply will not exist? How does a conscious being comprehend non-existence? I can't. Zero is the closest thing we have and it's still a number.

It occurred to me that I don't even know how my Grandfather views death. Maybe he believes in heaven. It seems a relevant piece of information to learn about someone peering into what could be the rest of eternity, or the beginning of nothing. This single belief probably colors every day of the rest of his life.

I chanced breeching a sore topic, and asked, "so...what do you think happens when we die?"

He says, gruffly, "Blank. Nothing."

I pause. Can I ask a follow-up question? "How do you feel about that?"

"Well, I suppose if it were any other way, it would just get too crowded wherever we were going."

I try to imagine my grandfather as a non-entity. The shell we would witness from here would be like a recently vacated cocoon: empty and, having served its purpose, meaningless. Then I imagine the view from his side: it's dark, his eyes are open, and he's thinking about how dark it is. I erase the image, no, he can't be thinking, he's blank. There's no awareness at all, so you don't need to worry about him, and whether he's comfortable, or alone, or scared. You don't need to worry at all. He's blank. D.N.E. Does Not Exist. Those wrinkles, like trenches down his cheeks, they won't be there anymore. He won't need his glasses. That reverence he has for the Earth is going to end, even as he becomes a part of it.

I'd like to ask more questions, though I'm not sure what they are. Often I am sitting across from him remembering that we probably don't have that much time left together; how we spend it should matter. It doesn't. There is love in this room even when we are silent.