The Dead
By James Nicolay

Your life is ending one moment at a time. - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

THESE NOVEMBER holidays I haven't visited any tombs nor have I lighted any candle for the dead. Not because I didn't feel like going through all the troubles of enduring heavy traffic in going back to my hometown on a Halloween afternoon nor did I go to some cheesy heavily Western-influenced craze of partying with strange ghastly costumed Jack-o'-lantern or Vampire Lestat wannabes. Part of the reason is my extreme apathy towards the relatives on my father's side, whose remarkable hypocrisy with their own kin made me want to loose any thin ties formally knotting my affiliation with them, only that I still have some respect for my father and both deceased great-grandfather and grand aunt—I have offered my prayers for them out of respect. And that's the main reason: I feel nothing towards these dead people but respect, that which did not surpass any particular emotion which would make me reverently remember them because I haven't been able to love them while they were still alive, and sorry, but I don't have any plans of being faithful to the etymology of the word necrophilia (fond of the dead). I cannot love the dead because they remind me of my mortality and of others, too. Fortunately, there is not one deceased among the people that I dearly love. The mere thought of losing someone I love forever keeps me strangely remorseful and grieved.

I am not afraid to die. My worries are about my doubts and regrets on having really consummated my life before my expiration date arrives. I wonder if there would be regrets of any kind from myself and from those who would mourn over my powdery razed carcass; cremation is nature-friendly and more pragmatic than buying the overpriced casket and some piece of land, I wouldn't want my relatives to bother having a land title in my name, there are thousands of living people who cannot even afford to buy a square centimeter of land. I hope my parents and relatives and friends and not-so-friends would all bow down at my funeral and say that I led a good life. What is even problematic in that vision is that a good life is very subjective; what might be whopping victorious life for me might be boring as hell for some. Not that I'm being too paranoid about their comments, but these closing impressions in my wake would be all that is left of me. Gone are my physical vanity, and without being metaphysical, I agree that it is the soul (or dignity or name or essence) which is the only part of us that really remains on this earth eternally.

In a long enough timeline, we are inches away from joining the dead.

It is only when we know that we are dying that we begin to live. We have to accept that maxim of John Irving in his most famous book: In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases. It is only when we know that we will not be always young and alive that we will come to live like we never did before. The moment I have realized this thought I started living the life I wanted to live. Before I reached my twenty-second year of living, I want to be assured that everything that I really wanted to do when I was twenty-one I have done it all. No space for regrets as much as possible. I am twenty-two and would never be twenty-one again. Onward goes time and so does my life as it dances with its remaining chances. I would live each moment as if it's the last. I would live knowing that I am stepping above other dead people in the ground, who once had walked on the surface of the earth thinking of the same grotesque idea. And I would love—life without it is merely existence. Should a life without love remaining in my heart occurs, then in no time I would rather jump off my skin and party with the dead.

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