Image by DesignByDessie from Pixabay
My 59th birthday is coming up this week, and I have a lot to reflect on. Being a radiographer has given me the gift of knowing, on an everyday basis, that life can end in an instant. More than that, it’s shown me that it will end for all of us.
I’ve always half-joked that I’d like to cryogenically freeze my head. I think humans, if we don’t destroy ourselves first, will eventually be able to replicate themselves—think of it like a Dollhouse-type world. Memories are like videos stored on servers, except our servers are our brains. At some point soon, I believe we’ll figure out how that storage works and be able to transfer that data onto servers. I do think that will be possible soon—just not in my lifetime. Maybe my son’s, but not mine. I say it half-jokingly because I’ll never be able to afford it anyway; it’s massively expensive.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been compiling a list of people from my high school who have died—people I once shared space with, 40 years ago. They had families, they had lives, and then they didn’t. Some died last year; some died in 1991. This is coming for me, and it’s coming for all of us. There’s no avoiding it.
Another gift from the career I chose is that I don’t fear death, or what comes after it (which is nothingness). Religion and the idea of an afterlife are things humans created once we became conscious, as a way to cope with our own mortality. When I say I don’t fear death, I mean I don’t fear what comes after. I certainly fear the process of dying—I’ve seen so much suffering there, in 40 years working in healthcare. But I know what comes after death: it’s the same as what came before birth. I didn’t exist then, and I won’t exist afterward in the same way. The only thing that will carry me forward is the memory of me held by the people who know and love me. But I’m no longer worried about something I can neither control nor avoid.
Between now and the end, I’m going to do as much living as possible. I’m going to try to be as present as I can, and to feel grateful in each moment.
