AFTER THE FUNERAL

And so it begins, the daily struggle, the battle to make sense out of life. We are alone. There is no consciousness after we are dead. Some of the worst people adhere to a fictional mythology.

We return to the state from which we emerged. There is no heaven. Certain moments can be described as heavenly, but there is no blissful afterlife, not even for the Islamic martyrs who have been told there will be virgins waiting for them once they cross the threshold from existence to non-existence. There is hell and hell is here.

We are meant to suffer. We must try our best to overcome our suffering or we will fall victims to insanity or even take our own lives. We are all destined to die, even our beautiful babies and young children, and we are destined to be forgotten. Unless you're a great artist, not a trace will remain of you or those who used to remember you. It is all a foregone conclusion.

Two weeks don't pass that someone I know doesn't pass. These constant concatenations of deaths only better prepare us for our own departures. If we aren't suffering, we live in the daily fear of suffering. Who is going to die whom we most dearly love? And when they are buried and the mourners shuffle off to their humdrum lives, we are left more alone than at any time time in our lives.

We don't exist under a blue sky. Blinded by our own wills to survive, we don't recognize that a black shroud envelops us. Enjoy the week.