On Death

I've been thinking a lot about death lately and I'm not sure why. It started when I flew down to Orlando for that training class I was sent too- every flight, all I could think of was that song by Bright Eyes, where the plane crashes into the ocean. That and that poor Air France jet that vanished off Brazil- I read somewhere that they estimated that they would have fallen for 3 minutes before hitting the ocean. 3 minutes and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it, poor bastards. What do you think about in a situation like that? What do you do to prepare? Can you prepare?

It's weird, because before this, I've always found flying to be relaxing. Statistically, if something is going to go wrong on a plane, it'll be either during take off or landing- rarely midflight- and flying is still, statistically safer than driving. You can glide above the clouds, see the world in a way you can't from your little perch on the ground and then you're wherever you need to be.

But not this time. Oh sure, there was a little of that. The relaxation, the wonder of it all, but then we flew through a thunderstorm to get back to Moline and the two thoughts that kept running through my head were first that we were a flying metal tube travelling very fast through a cloud full of electricity and second that they had to have accounted for lightning when they built this airplane. Right?

So it was weird. And it just kept turning over and over in my head: what is death really like? And then, immediately following this came: was that a stupid question to ask, or what?

I get that there are no guarantees in life- nor do I expect to get any, but I'd like to live as long as I possibly can and be as healthy as I possibly can and do as much as I possibly can so that when the time comes, and the Missus is next to me and we're surrounded by grandchildren, children, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren and the like, I can sit back and be at peace with the knowledge that I've experienced everything I could possibly want to on this crazy ball of rock called Planet Earth and then I can see what might be next.

Theologically, I believe in a higher power and some conception of heaven. Scientifically, we're all energy and when we die, that energy has to go somewhere- you can buy into parallel universes and different planes of conciousness, but at the end of the day, it's got to be a heaven of some kind. Whether it hews to the traditional religious conceptions of heaven or whether it's you're own personal construct I don't know. (Two of my favorite notions: heaven is like Hooters at the Mall of America- good food, good company, good liquor- but not beer- and sports and television for all eternity or it's like Fireworks on the Fourth of July. A blanket, a dark field full of children playing on a warm summer night and all the people you love, forever watching the most beautiful fireworks you can imagine.)

Silly notions, probably- but comforting to think of nonetheless.