Processing our mortality

[Fireball]

The very moment "I" cease to exist, it will literally be as though "I" never existed in the first place.  From "my" POV it will be like time snapping backwards.  It's the ultimate dissolution.  So, why be bothered at all?

Well they clearly aren't the same thing. When I die, it will not be literally as though I never existed. I had two children, have three grandchildren, I wrote all sorts of software, published three books, edited a journal, wrote blog posts, posted here and on other fora, ate a bunch of food. No one else would have done it exactly the same way.

I realize that in some ways living is like splashing around in a bucket of water; once you take your hand out, no matter how long or vigorously you splashed, it's like you never had your hand in there. That metaphor is usually deployed to humble someone who thinks they're indispensable. But that's not literally true. Life and human knowledge does progress, however much fits and starts may be involved, and I've had a role in that.

When my son died at the age of 30, was it like he never lived at all? Nope, being his father changed me forever and I think about him and miss him every day. When my wife died, was it like she never lived at all? Nope. Same story there. Of course, when I die and my wife's mother and aunt die and all the people she went to school with or worked with or was a friend do have died, she will be forgotten apart from little fragments that might still be preserved like this very post. But she still impacted literally thousands of people, enough so that people who hadn't seen her in thirty-five years bothered to travel hundreds of miles to her funeral to pay their respects. Not out of obligation (I wouldn't have known about them, even, or how she impacted them, if they hadn't come). It was because she really made a difference for them, and they wanted to honor that.

When my Dad died, the son of the guy he worked for many decades prior, bothered to come to his funeral. I had forgotten about them, frankly, but they wanted my brothers and I to know that my Dad's life mattered. He had been a key part of their aircraft maintenance company and they couldn't have done it without him. Some time later I came upon my father's reference books about metallurgy and stress equations and techniques for riveting and a million other things that went right over my head and I realized that this man who was a grade school drop out was actually a frigging genius and autodidact who passed all sorts of certifications with a near-perfect score. My father took me to work with him as a child now and then, and one time took me up in a plane, and shut the engine off and opened the windows as we glided among the cumulus clouds. This gruff, undemonstrative man said, "I just want you to know that this is why I fly."

He died 15 years ago at the age of 87 and it is NOT as though he had never existed.

My guess is that all the people cited above seriously underestimated their own importance. Partly out of humility, sometimes out of perfectionism, but mainly because it's just hard to see when it's you and you're aware of goals you never reached.

Never think that the world will EVER be as if you never existed.

  You've a real way with words! People should heed what you say. Your dad was a hell of a guy, too, it would seem.