Traveler 3361

Emily Dickinson, so wisely said, “Life is a smart misery.” While driving west on the LIE I noticed the other cars and their drivers. We are all headed in the same direction, but I doubt any are heading my way. We are all travelers, in our personal spaceships, these bodies of ours. Each manufactured, some with great designs, others, unintentionally. Each thinking that they are the most important of living beings. Each, hopefully, entrenched in their endeavors to accomplish something important, something necessary to the common good of humankind. 

When I was seven, I started catechism classes to prepare me for making my first Holy Communion. I was taught that one day I would die. I was questioned, where did I want to spend the rest of eternity? Wait a minute, what did they mean I was going to die? I had not realized this painful fact until that moment. Sure, I had heard about death. My favorite dog, Lady, had been hit and killed by a speeding car. I never saw her body, as my foster parents did not want to upset me further. I only knew she would not be coming back. But me? I was going to die one day? That was over fifty years ago, and from that day to this, my final thoughts at night have been that I am going to die one day. 

I respect those that have faith, and therefore the comfort of an afterlife. I have, on many occasions, prayed for the comfort of believing. I tried some faith-based solutions to this impending doom. I have been Catholic, Baptist, Born-Again, Non-denominational, Buddhist, and Taoist. None of these brought me the comfort I sought. Naturalistic Pantheism is as good as I get in a system to believe in. 

I have been pondering my demise a great deal lately. I am in my sixties. I have how many more years left? I have been breaking it down, this tremendous fear of death I live with daily. I have concluded it is not death I fear but dying. There are so many unpleasant ways to go. I cross many of these off my list of acceptable forms of an ending to my time. 

I look at old photographs of me when each day was like living a year. Days were strung out like a winding road, and my biggest concern was the welfare of my children. My eldest child, Michael, was taken much too soon, so many years ago. My two younger children, Vincent and Eliza Jo, are grown. They are a testament to my accomplishing my most precious task (mistakes and all), raising good people. I do not have that motherly obsession to keep me distracted as to what may lie ahead for me. Now I am alone with my dread. 

If I am to believe the fatal global-warming theories, we all have but a few years left on this planet of ours. I am more concerned about today, this minute, this second. In the event that we do not all explode or burn up, what is my impact? When I am gone, how many will mourn my passing? How many will remember that I indeed lived? I am not looking for fame. I am looking for a small piece of permanence, something that will stand for what I gave to our race. I have set two children on the starting line in the great race. I have written some poems. But what have I, Tammy, really contributed to the betterment of our species? What wisdom have I imparted to the rest of our kind? I have been a professor for over ten years. I believe teaching the next generation is a noble calling, but still I wonder what have I accomplished on a personal level?

I think about the other species that inhabit our world. They are very much like humans. If you study cats, or dogs, you can detect their unique personalities. They share common traits as a species, but their personalities are variations on a theme. Once they pass and we view the body of each, they are still and begin the journey of decomposition, and their return to the earth as part of what feeds as nutrients. We deny that journey to ourselves with the elaborate ways we treat our departed loved ones. 

We, as a species, have evolved radically, into what we are today. But there was a time when we too, were just a small, insignificant part of the cycle. With our evolution, we have given ourselves more importance than I think we may deserve. It seems (putting Ancient Aliens theories aside) that we are the happy happenstance of mutations of our original design, and we have made the most of this happenstance. 

There are only a handful of people in history that we can invoke their names to demonstrate their contributions to the giant leaps we have made in our race. We have created so many areas of serving humankind, from medicine to law, to education, to entertainment, to perversion. We have developed countless ways to advance and destroy ourselves, and what has been my impact on our kind? 

I have formulated my own theory, that others may indeed share, and that is once we die, that is it. No pain, no dread, no reward, no punishment, no sleep, nothing. We become what we were before, unknowing. Obliteration of consciousness. From the void we were drawn out of, to the void we all will return. Pure energy, to be absorbed into whatever might be in need of that energy at the particular moment. Maybe that is the only true form of reincarnation? 

In closing, I quote Walt Whitman from "Song of Myself,” section 32, “I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,/I stand and look at them long and long./They do not sweat and whine about their condition,/They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,/They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,/Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,/Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,/Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”
I remain,
Traveler 3361(Dr. Tammy Jean Nuzzo-Morgan)