Death

"It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."  Woody Allen

I’m not messing around here.  As this blog is about the trials and tribulations of getting older, I could warm up with a few grumbles on the parlous state of customer service in this country or an informed analysis of why popular music has gone down the toilet since the 70s.  But then I thought, sod it, I'll go straight to the big one and start with Death.

I'm not scared of Death.I'm scared shitless of dying, but I’m relaxed that the afterlife is out of my hands.  I’m not a religious man, but I've given a great deal of thought to what happens next.  I’ve read books on philosophy, looked into different religions and even watched Songs of Praise. After careful analysis I have come to the conclusion that once I breathe my last there are three possibilities.

The first possibility is that what I've spent my life believing is some sort of grown-up fairy story is right, and I'll be faced with either Heaven or Hell.  Somewhere there is a celestial spreadsheet with two columns, Plus and Minus, containing all the things I’ve done that are good and bad.  If SUM(PLUS) > SUM(MINUS) then it’s Heaven for me.  If not, then Hell beckons (I don’t have any theory on what happens if the two columns are equal. Perhaps one week up, one week down for the rest of eternity?).  I imagine Heaven to be like a desert island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  Warm,sunny and somewhere where you can spend the whole day in your shorts and flipflops.  If it's Hell, I imagine it will probably be a bit like Stoke. 

The second option is that I'll come back as someone or something else. Again, I suspect the celestial spreadsheet will come into play.  Now, don't get me wrong about this, I have a 54-year unblemished record of heterosexuality, but I could quite fancy coming back as a woman, just to get the full picture (my wife suggests I would have to have been really good in this life to come back as a woman). 

The final option, and the one that I think is most likely, is that death is a big black nothingness.  I can remember the time when there were two television channels in the UK and they both closed down around midnight.  At the close down the National Anthem would play, the announcer would wish you a good night and the screen would go black.  I reckon that death is exactly like that, but without the National Anthem.

So, whilst I’d like to hope that there's something more, I reckon it's the big, black nothingness for us all.Just in case, though, I’m keeping my options open. I'll be kind, helpful and try to be a good person. I’ve been our local church treasurer for the past six years, so I’m hoping that will stand me in good stead.  In addition, I'll ask my religious friends and family to put in a good word for me through their prayers.  So, if I’m reincarnated, I’ll come back as someone taller with bigger muscles rather than something without a backbone.   And if there's a Heaven and Hell, I hope the great afterlife administrator will hit ‘recalculate’ on my post mortem spreadsheet and decide that I'm going upstairs rather than downstairs.  Before I step onto the celestial up elevator, however, I'll check to see where my dad has gone. If he isn't upstairs then someone has buggered up the spreadsheet formula.