The Last Great Adventure

What Happens After Our Expiration Date?

I’m not dying to write about this subject, but maybe I am. And that is the point.

My friend Bob and I were having breakfast and talking about death. He has cancer in some lymph nodes in his gut and has temporarily stopped taking two experimental drugs. At several points in his treatment I thought the drugs almost killed him. But scans have indicated that the drugs have reduced the size of the nodes. The cancer has not metastasized. A good thing.

He is unsure if he will resume the drugs, or try radiation, or maybe do nothing.

Our conversation ranged over fear, pain, concern for those left behind, and what happens after we die—if anything.

The trauma induced by the experimental drugs was horrible. For days at a time, he simply was not here with us. Unconscious, almost comatose, but when he was semi-conscious he was almost unrecognizable as my friend, a being seemingly ravaged by chemicals.

“I’m okay with dying,” he said. “I’m not afraid of it. This last six months has not been a life. I’ve felt miserable, I’ve been miserable to the people I love.”

As he said that I realized that I am not okay with his, or my dying. That I fear death. So when I started this essay I went looking for a comforting quote.

In a commencement address at Stanford, Steve Jobs said, ”Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” He died six years later.

My long-time riding partner and Bob’s best friend Steve, died seven years ago of lung cancer. From his diagnosis, he survived two rounds of experimental cancer drugs and lived eight more years, more than two thirds of which were good years.

I saw Steve a day before he died. He knew his systems were shutting down and death was imminent, but he was not in pain and relatively comfortable. When he saw me he held up eight fingers to celebrate living so long with cancer and pointed at a bracelet of mine that I had given him to bring him good luck. We both smiled at the victory…and then cried.

One of the reasons I fear death is the thought of suffering, and particularly pain. After retiring as the best dentist in Boulder, Bob rode his bike, played golf and tennis as much as he wanted to, but he also did a weekly shift at a hospice. He has guaranteed me that unless I’m hit by a dump truck, death will be basically painless in today’s world of powerful pain medicines.

We have all lost friends and family. The best way to describe this loss is that their passing leaves a hole in the lives of those of us left behind that manifests itself at odd times. Whenever I see an eagle cruising the thermals here along the Front Range I say, “Hey Skipper!” Because I am reminded of how my friend Scott could sail his boat as if it were a dance with the wind. I am reminded that I miss his laughter, love of life, loyalty, and how he never yelled (maybe once or twice) when I did something really stupid on his boat.

It is reasonable for the dying to feel a real responsibility for friends and loved ones left behind. Yes, they are going to grieve. But when I yell, “Hey Skipper!” I smile and remember some really good times with an old friend sailing the Salish Sea. I want to call him in Seattle and trade lies and laughter. He is no longer there. That might be him cruising the thermals along the Front Range.

Bob and I had finished our Eggs Benedict, his with fruit, mine with potatoes, and were sipping tepid coffee when he said, “I don’t believe in an afterlife.”

I had known this about him from years of conversations, particularly when we were younger and still thought of ourselves as bulletproof.

The idea that that death is the last great adventure popped into my head. The thought is relevant because we literally do not know what happens to our soul or essence or consciousness when we die.

I thought Charles Lindberg had written the line. I’m my own fact checker. He didn’t write those words, although there is a certain kind of spirituality in most of his writing reflecting this line of thought. So, I will stop attributing the line to Lindberg. But I will keep using the line to explain what I think about an afterlife.

Here is an attributable line from Lindberg from his Autobiography of Values, “I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves?"

I admire Lindberg for his sense of adventure and his intelligence. As an “America Firster” and antisemite, his politics were awful. But he still said and wrote thoughtful words that survive him.

I explained to Bob that in a macro sense I believe some greater being actually created us. I wonder why this being would go to all that work to create these intricate interconnected systems—from the universe, to our planet, to a river, to a human, to a single atom and just toss used components of these systems into the void. Everything evolves, everything is built on something that came before it.

This greater being could be a jerk, possibly mean-spirited, or maybe an oblivious fool on the hill, but it seems this being, who sparked this evolution, this building on what came before, would salvage components like consciousness to reuse countless times. That could be life after life.

Bob gave me his “From your lips to God’s ears” look. He’s done that to me a number of times in our conversations. And we laughed.

The single truth in all of this is that we don’t know what happens after we physically die, and that is the last great adventure.

Postscript: I love the way Marcus Aurelius handled this question, “Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.”

END

Death is a tricky subject to write about. Folks simply do not want to think about death, much less talk or read about death. Substack metrics will tell me how many “views” the essay receives. A good bet will be less than 300 views. My essays range from 300 to 600 views.

As long as I’m doing metrics, it’s been a good year so far for Mountain Passages, thank you. The following posts received 650 views:

• Ski Patrolling Ends, Jan 19.

• Earning Your Face, Feb 16.

• Cats and Motorcycles, By Pat Moore, March 15.

• Lay Me Down, By M. John Fayhee, March 22.

• Concerning the 25th, April 13.

All of these are available for free in the archive, alanstark1@substack.com. I find it interesting that guest essays do as well, and often better, than my own stuff. Feel free to send me an essay at alanbearstark@gmail.com. I promise to read it. I may even post it.

For business reasons I suppose, Substack allows only paid subscribers to comment here. So if you would like to comment on this essay, send me a note at alanbearstark@gmail.com. Paid subscribers use the button below please.

There are intrinsic rewards to writing essays for Substack, such a breaking through the blank page/screen syndrome and the associated excuses for not writing.

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How about the fear of posting and having the entire internet seeing the writing as inept at best, and drivel at worst. But posting anyhow, because someone out there might enjoy the writing.

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I’m alanstark1@substack.com. Thank you for reading my stuff.