But what of death, he asked...

Gregg Allman was my age, 69. He looked fine in a fairly recent interview with Dan Rather and then BOOM! The big dirt nap. Not one, but two, count them, two of my college buddies, just crossed over the rainbow bridge in the last three weeks. They were both dogs back in school, for sure.

That’s my idea of heaven. Going where all my dogs have gone. They can vie for space on my lap when I get there. I doubt I’ll be so lucky, but hey, a guy can dream, right? I mean if Christians can get wood over the thought of “dem golden slippers to walk dem golden streets”, I can hope for a hairy tongue bath. What would I want metal shoes for or streets made of gold anyway. Gold would be totally devalued if it were actually the best building material available, cheaper than asphalt. I’m not sure the Christians have thought that one through, but they’re like that.

My atoms will go back to join others. Neither created nor destroyed, a continuum. The point of life is life itself. Life works hard to exist, everywhere. That’s the miracle. It’s a Zen thing, it just is. For many of us that’s not enough though. Ego demands a big story. We can’t just wink out one day and be gone. Tell it to Greg Allman.

Balance is key. Everything seeks balance. North, South, magnetic poles, hot & cold. Every cell in our bodies looks for homeostasis. It’s when we get out of balance that things go askew. So after living a full life, we look for that balance on the other side, after the curtain closes. That’s ego talking. We build monuments, pickle bodies and put them in sealed boxes. Great rulers take provisions, troops and earthly treasures, but they just become more atoms to add to the mix. We probably all have a few King Tut atoms spinning circles in inside of us. I’m starting to look a bit like him.

Life prevails. Our energy lives forever.

The immortality that we so desperately lust for is in that energy. It can also be seen in the turn of a phrase by a child or grandchild who has a bit of our DNA. The way they turn their head, how their laughter goes high and trickles off to a hiccough at the end. Mom used to do that.

I was riding in a car with my siblings recently. Sister Judy turned to speak to me from the front seat, and for a micro second, she was my Grandmother. It was in the way her eyes and mouth moved. Hi Grandma!

A friend who is 30 years younger than me, said that growing old must be a bitch. I don’t really have a problem with it and death doesn’t get a single line on my list of things to worry about. I often say that one of the beauties of growing old is that my “give a shit levels” bottom out. Been there, done that, everything from here on out is gravy.

I almost died two years ago, ambushed by blood clots that had hidden themselves in veins and arteries, attacking without warning in a coordinated effort to pull my plug. Lying in that ICU bed, it was very comforting to know that although Carla had just visited, she was still in the hospital somewhere doing her own patient care work. Daughter Hannah was asleep, curled up on the guest couch. She flew out to be with me when Ruth had to fly back home. A tag team passing in the air at 10,000 feet. Icing on my cake of life.

All of my girls were happy and healthy. I’ve had a great run. It’s all good. I don’t fear death. But then I’ve had the good fortune to live an exceptionally untroubled, happy life and right then I was drifting on a morphine cloud. All I had to do was press the call button in my right hand if I wanted more. I pressed it a lot.

So what’s the moral here? If your own celebration of life has been long and full, if your loved ones you’re leaving behind are strong and successful humans in this world, and if you are pumped way over the recommended tire pressure full of morphine drugs, death is nothing to fear, a dreamless sleep.

But if you don’t meet all those criteria and there’s no nice little package with a tidy bow, be scared as hell.

It may be your last… but have a great day!

You’re fucked.