Epilogue
The Binary Choices of Life
Over the years since Brenda died, something unexpected has happened.
People come to me.
Sometimes they know my story. Sometimes they only know a piece of it. Some know nothing of it. But again and again people who have lost someone or are in the process of loss find their way to me and ask some version of the same question.
How do you live after this?
And after many of those conversations I finally realized something very simple.
There are really only two possibilities in life.
Two.
Either we die and there is no existence, or we die and there is.
That’s it.
Those are the only two possibilities.
So think about it.
If a person we love dies and there is no existence after this life, then what is the point of mourning that loss forever and failing to live the only life we will ever know? And this again.
If they no longer exist, they cannot see our sorrow. They cannot know our pain. They cannot experience anything at all.
So why would we spend the rest of the only life we have refusing to live it?
But if there is an existence after this life, then what is the point of mourning endlessly because our loved one is gone?
If they continue on somewhere beyond this life, then they know something we do not yet know. They know that one day we will join them in something we cannot even comprehend. So magical what they have is that they certainly do not concern themselves with us because they know it is a fleeting step in a larger journey.
They worry not about us in the way we worry about them. They would not want us frozen in grief when we still have life left to live. Either way, the conclusion is the same.
Live.
Andy said it best to Red in The Shawshank Redemption:
“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
Life deals each of us a hand of cards.
Sometimes the hand plays well. Sometimes it does not.
We do not get to choose the hand.
Stephen Colbert once said something that stayed with me when he spoke about losing his father and brothers as a young man:
“You cannot pick the things you are grateful for.” meaning you have to be grateful for you entire life….all of it.
Loss is one of those things.
But what we can choose is what comes next.
So this is what I tell people who come to me now carrying grief.
Give yourself permission to live a more joyful life than you had before no matter the circumstances of what you see as your loss. Because if the people we loved no longer exist, they cannot care whether we mourn forever.
And if they do exist somewhere beyond this life, then they already know something we will eventually learn.
They know we should live.
They know we should seek joy.
So seek more joy than you had before.
After all, the choice is simple.
Get busy living. Or get busy dying.
I want to thank my late wife Brenda for taking me on and bringing me along to make me a better man for my next life. I would like to thank my wife Gayle for understanding my thoughts of this and my wonderings about my life’s journey and for taking me into the future.
The End.