“The only certainties in life are death and taxes, and one of those is negotiable.”

Death sucks. There’s no two ways around it. If it were up to me, I just won’t do it. My relationship with death has been interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the idea of dying that terrifies me. I’ve honestly played in cemeteries since I was 6, ghosts and my family go way back. So I get the idea of death, I understand it but that’s not what bothers me.




We played tag, but probably would've built a fort if we didn't think the nuns would get us.

It’s the idea that I stop. Everything that makes me, me ceases in this place. I don’t get to see what comes next. It’s like buying a book only to find out you’re missing the last two chapters. Now I don’t plan on going easy, I will rage against the dying of the light, but I also understand that as long as someone we’ve connected with survives, so does a part of us. There’s comfort in that. But with the passing of yet another person from my childhood, I’m forced once more to stop and examine these ideas.

I’ve heard everything from the atheist camp who reminds me that I’ll only end up fertilizer and possibly fish food to the Catholic ideal of Heaven except I don’t get to see my favorite pets. So what to believe?

I remember being exposed to part of Ode: Intimations of Immortality in high school. Now poetry is subjective, especially to the mind of a teenager, but part if it always stuck with me:

Is something that doth live,	135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—	140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—	//
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,	155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day

I know the poem jumps, but these are the lines that caught my attention. Now he’s a Romantic poet (that’s Romantic with a capital R, not romantic. There is a difference.) and mixing that with my recent discovery of Transcendentalism in Ms. Rhoback’s class these changed my view of the afterlife.

So here’s my take on it all: fiber optic wands. That’s the way I see life.

That's right, life's better with stars and glitter!

I’ve always been a firm believer in the idea that as we pass through each other’s lives we leave a mark, no matter how small. I think I got the idea from my grandfather. We used to throw rocks into the river sending plumes of “smoke” into the water and ripples across the surface. (Really clumps of dirt and debris exploding from the tufts of grass growing in the river, but he let me imagine whatever I wanted. He was awesome like that.)



Those ripples were brief and that always made me sad when I lost track of them. Poppy—that’s what we called him—used to remind me that was part of life, you get to make new ripples. But that doesn’t mean the old ones were truly gone. Once you’ve seen something it’s there forever in your head.



Ripples are still cool!

Again, remember I was like 6 when he imparted this wisdom to me, so I know I’m paraphrasing, but the idea stuck with me. Instead of ripples, I began to see it as a strand of tangled lights. Each person is their own center of one of these cluster, you are the light in your own world. Meeting other, we ping into their cluster and brighten it. If they move on it doesn’t matter, you can still follow the trail of their light. (Much easier now in this digital age.) But when one of those lights goes out, the whole wand is dimmed. It just doesn’t look as bright.



That’s what happens when someone we know dies. The world is less brilliant. Even if they were an acquaintance, a colleague, a neighbor, there’s one less piece that you’re connected to in this world. This continues until like pulling the strand from a fiber optic wand, only the core is left. And eventually you know that’s going to burn out too.



They stay with us, like lights in the night.

However, you can’t forget about the coolest part of these wands—the trail of light they leave behind. Waving them in the dark you can see threads of color waving back and forth. It’s that trail that important. That’s what’s left behind, as long as we can see the trail, no matter how faint,  it’s still there. The light, the person, isn’t truly gone.

Over the years I’ve lost friends and family in many ways: car accidents that we’re their fault, suicides, cancer, illness, and even old age. Many were lights so far out and little thought of that their blinking out was a minor incident, a flickering in the corner of my eye then gone.

Others were needles of ice cutting into bone. I’ve been lucky that those people were kind enough to send signs that lessened the dimming, though made it no less painful. But, if I’m right, they’re not really gone. They find their way back from time to time. A name that makes me smile. Creating a character whose personality seems familiar. The face of a nephew. Lessons they taught. As long as I remember them, their light still flickers from time to time.

So tonight I raise a cup of coffee to these, my friends who’ve passed to whatever comes next. Though your lights have darkened, the trails and marks you’ve left behind remain. I humbly hope that one day I affect someone as much as all of you. May you wands never burn out.