ON LIFE AND DEATH
WHY DO WE HAVE TO DIE?
WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR BODY WHEN WE DIE?
“When you were born, you cried, and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” - Cherokee proverb
The ongoing deadly coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the world. It has been a personal disaster for me (I have lost two members of my family) and global disaster for over 2 million people. So far, more than 100 million people are infected and, above two million people have perished across the world.
While we are dealing with personal grief and cherishing the memory of our loved ones, as well as trying to comprehend the gravity of this desperate situation, we also can’t help but to think about our own mortality and reflect on our life.
The pandemic has reminded us that we are all mortal and going to die one day. Immortality is only belonging to God. If diseases, accidents and natural disasters do not kill us, we will die of aging and/or natural causes. This is the way Mother Nature created and programmed us. It is one of the basic laws of Nature that “every living organism is born – mature – reproduce – get old – and die.” So that space opens up, for upcoming and better generation, to be born and thrive.
Yet, we all have a primordial fear of dying. This inborn and necessary fear protects us by forcing us to be very careful and take good care of ourselves to stay alive. But this fear continues unnecessarily, even when we have lived long enough, and our time had arrived to say a long “goodbye” to our loved ones.
Maybe, instead of the fear of dying, we should reflect on our life more, by asking ourselves the following questions:
-Have we accomplished our mission in life?
-What kind of legacy we are leaving behind?
-What kind of common values (duty, honor, hard work, moral and ethical courage, responsibility) have we remained loyal to in our life?
-Did we touch the heart and minds of some people, in a way that they are going to remember us, after we are gone?
-What else can we do in our life?
-Did we plan what we are going to do after our loved ones passes away, before us?
Modern medicine could not remedy our fear of dying, but religions have by creating a concept of immortal soul, paradise and hell so that we could live forever in these places, after we die, depending on what kind of person we have been.
Come to think of it, in a sense, we genetically live on in our offspring forever. We also live on in the memories of the people that we have touched in their hearts and minds. And also, our basic blocks of life remain immortal, even after our death. Because live giving building blocks of our chemical and atomic elements will remain and give life for other new creatures, even after our death.
It is interesting to know, what happens to our body when we die? When we die, we are left with a husk of lifeless, cold body with no functional activities in any organs, no feeling or pain. Immediately after death, the biochemical bonds that holds the body together start to break, tissues start to oxidize and decay and it continuous until everything is broken down to their original, life giving building blocks of molecular, chemical and atomic elements, just as they existed before they became us.
I personally fear more of the dying process than the death itself. Pain and suffering of a deadly disease or a stroke or senility that prevents me to communicate with people around me. Or reading a book or listening to the classical music I love, to become unable to feed myself or go to the bathroom on my own, scares me much more than the death itself.
As I see it, I think this will be “a-dead-man-walking stage of life” for me. I hope and pray by that time, physician assisted suicide (PAS) or euthanasia would become legal and would enable me to end that miserable stage of living life.
