The Meaning of Death

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It was a quiet evening. The rain that beat its rhythmic anthem on the windowpanes was soothing after the rush of the day. But her face belied the apparent calm of the evening. Her eyes darted from side to side and an expression of anxiety tainted her otherwise placid face.

“What she doing now? Goodness, you think she’d be more interesting after all she’s been through.”

“She’s dying, cut her some slack. Surely you remember dying?”

She never considered death so thoroughly before. It had always seemed a distant phantom almost intangible in its vagueness. But now, now that the specter was knocking on her door (she most certainly was not knocking on its) it had been almost painful in its reality.

“Death isn’t as scary as she thinks it is.”

“Shush you! You surprise me sometimes with how dimwitted you can be.”

Live life to the fullest, she had always been told. Death may come too soon, or at least sooner than you would like. Carpe Diem had been her motto and she’d tried to live life to the fullest. She filled every moment with some sort of learning experience or just plain old experience. Yet now as she looked back, she realized she had actually learned nothing.

“So much knowledge behind her and it takes her years to realize she knows nothing?”

“It’s no surprise you were disliked. You have no patience with anyone.”

She had gone through life absorbing experience like a sponge. She’d done as much as she could, hoping that somehow it would make her a better person. That when death came she’d go without regret, knowing she’d done everything she could to live to the fullest. And she had, she’d done everything she possibly could, but she hadn’t really lived. She hadn’t had the time to.

“I wish there was some way to tell her.”

“Tell her what? That death is oblivion? That it doesn’t matter in the end how much you learned or how much you did? That in the end all you are is nothing, just a memory?”

“You think she knows?”

“She’ll find out eventually. Everyone does. It’s just a matter of when.”

She’d ignore the quiet moments. A day spent reading, enjoying the light summer breeze was a day wasted, a day that hadn’t been experienced to it’s fullest potential. Now she realized those days were as important as the busy days. Those days held the treasures, the essence of what it was to be alive, to be breathing. She saw now that living life to the fullest doesn’t mean filling your days with activity, it means loving yourself enough to know that you are loved. It means enjoying the sunshine just because it is there. It is seeing everything as a gift and a blessing.

“It’s a shame.”

“Hmm?”

“Death can make things so clear. It’s a pity it doesn’t happen earlier.”

“Earlier? You wish to live less?”

“No! Of course not. More just wishing somehow we could know everything before we start out. Know what we’re getting ourselves into.”

“If we knew everything already, we wouldn’t have to live.”

As she drew back from the window, she found herself strangely at ease. Death no longer seemed as menacing nor as painful as before. Now that she knew her mistake, she regretted nothing. Clarity was such a freeing emotion. She wished only that she could pass it on, so that others could learn from her error.

“So death is necessary then?”

“Death is life and life is death. They are interconnected. You can’t have one without the other.”

“I wish you could.”

“No you don’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because without death, life means nothing. If you can never lose it, why would you cherish it? Why would it matter what you did?”

Life was a learning experience, but not the pedagogical device she had thought it. You lived to learn and learned to live. And to live means to know everything and nothing at the same time. To finally decide that meaning was what you made of it.

“So death makes life important?”

“Death provides meaning. And meaning is everything.”