IS DEATH REALLY A SLEEP?

There's an ancient saying -- "he slept with his fathers." Kinda sums up human existence and the inevitable end result.

I only remember back as far as father and grandfather. I remember them as energetic, vibrant men, and so were my mother, grandmothers and two great grandmothers. They're all gone now, and I have no memories of any of the "fathers" who preceded them because I never knew them. I just know that the day will come when I will join them, but I'm not so sure that it's a sleep. More likely, it's the finality of blackness and nothingness just like what preceded my birth. Like Mark Twain, that nothingness was no inconvenience to me and I expect no inconvenience when I'm gone. If something continues on, so be it. I'll deal with that when I'm there, but I really question whether I'll have to.

I know for sure that my brain will stop functioning just as surely as when I was under anesthesia a few times as soon as the oxygenated blood ceases to flow. It's doubtful I'll be able to see with no functioning eyeballs to convert those electromagnetic waves into electrical signals to go to a brain that's stone cold dead. There'll be no smelling, no touching, no speaking. Those all-important five senses will have no means of functioning, without what a friend of mind has described as a five-sensed, carbon-based wet suit.

The belief that something astral and composed of spirit goes on is appealing, but I'm not convinced it does. Appealing anecdotes are out there. My second wife and step-daughter were certain they dealt with ghosts in Tombstone. Phyllis is also sure she saw a ghost once. People are absolutely sure in their own minds that existence goes on. The reality I have to consider is that people see all sorts of things that aren't really there all the time. Even courts of law have to cross examine eye witnesses and individual accounts of the same event can vary greatly because no two people see things exactly the same way.

There's only one way to find out, and I'm in no hurry to run that experiment quite yet. I know I'm going to "sleep with my fathers" one day. I'm just not sure "sleep" is the perfect metaphor. However, when I'm asleep, except for an occasional dream, I'm blissfully unaware of everything, even that recurring sharp pain in the top of my foot I wrote about last night.

Ah, questions and musings. They never end.