Dead Reckoning
I’ve spent time imagining my own funeral. You picture the music—what would you want playing at yours? I imagine what people will wear, which of my exes will fall apart thinking they made a mistake, which ones won’t bother showing up. You construct this entire production in your head, direct it like a film, handle every detail. Then you remember: you’ll be dead. You won’t see any of it.
Death’s the one certainty. It could be natural, could be an unfortunate encounter with a truck, could happen while you’re brushing your teeth. Faster than you expect.
Most people figure it’s the end. Game over. After that, you either go up or down—heaven or hell, depending on how many good deeds you accumulated and how many times you ran to a priest to have your conscience cleaned. It’s grim, the cosmic scorekeeping.
But people have imagined a lot of other possibilities. Some believe in underworlds or castles or reaching some kind of nirvana. Others get creative: you get reborn as a fish or a tree, or you slip through death somehow—become a vampire, become a zombie, something caught between both states. And then there are the persistent rumors: Elvis keeps getting sighted at gas stations in Nevada. Michael Jackson supposedly shows up here and there. They’re still walking around somewhere in the cracks of the world.
The thing is, nobody comes back with the answer. No message from whatever’s on the other side, no cosmic confirmation of any theory. So we’re all just guessing, picking a religion or a myth or a movie and pretending it’s truth, when really we’re just making it up like everyone else.
So what happens after? Why are we even here? The questions stay open. You spend your time thinking about them, imagining your own ending, and then one day the thinking stops.