Death and Taxes

They say the only two things you can count on are death and taxes. Well, that is a bit unfair to Death. Death is the only thing you can count on. I know a lot of people who don’t pay taxes. I don’t know anyone who will be alive in 100 years. That seems a bit strange when you really examine it: One century. One hundred years. Plenty of my relatives made it to 90. Some even made it a bit farther. But nobody cheats Death. Even if you pass the One Hundred Year mark, you can bet Death has your name towards the top of His list. And that is just it: none of us really knows when He will appear in our lives…either to claim us, or to claim family or friends.

One of my high school friends never made it out of his 20’s. He was the epitome of James Dean’s desire to live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. My uncle on the other hand came close to making it to 100…and retained the energy and mental awareness of a much younger man. I’m 46, and he had more energy than me.

As Americans we treat death as some sort of pariah. Something we aren’t supposed to speak about. We refer to family members that have died as having “passed on” or “passed away”, as if they have taken a trip and will be back sometime soon. But that just isn’t truth. My father did not “pass away” at 70, in April 2012. He DIED. Death came to him in the night, and he was dead in the morning when my mother went to see why he had not gotten up. I blamed a lot of people when that happened. I blamed them for not forcing my father to go to the hospital the night before he died. I blamed my mother, blamed my son, blamed myself for not being there, for not knowing. But the hard truth is, Death comes, He comes for us all, and you are not going to be the “one” who he forgets, the one he leaves off his list, the one who has something so very important to do and therefore you get to pass Go, collect your $200, and keep playing the great monopoly of life.

I wish I knew what lay behind the curtain that separates life and death. Doctors wish they knew. I worked for a company is my 20’s that sold supplies to cardiologists and hospitals. Many people pass from this realm to the next after their heart stops. My father was one of these people. Some of these people are brought back with drugs or stimulation to the heart (usually by electricity). Sometimes these people speak of floating above their body and watching the doctors working to bring them back from death. Some of these people say they pass through a tunnel where they are greeted by long dead family members. Of course, there are those who say this is just a hallucination caused by the release of opiate-like chemicals into the brain to help the body deal with death. These people are people I like to call “assholes”. They just have to find some way to spoil the belief in an afterlife many of us hold as sacred. What they are really saying is “there is no God”. I have many friends who are agnostics. I have some friends who are atheists. and a few pagans. Sometimes it is hard being friends with someone who finds it so difficult to believe an intelligent being created the universe and everything in it. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe this. But I cannot believe that Death claims us and we simply cease to be. I cannot believe there is nothing waiting on us. I can’t believe that the only sure things are death and taxes.

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.  -Benjamin Franklin