An Adaptation of a Conversation

 How are you doing?

My grandfather died.

Well, you know kid, sorry, but I got my own problems, my best friend died. Do you think there's a chance we're talking about the same person?

You know we are.

Listen, can I ask you something?

Sure.

Between the time he had the heart attack and the time he died, do you think he would have been in a lot of pain?

You know, that's exactly the sort of question he would have asked. They’d have sedated him.

Do you think he was scared?

I wasn't there when it happened, I wasn't there… But you know what would console you? Singing a song, got my guitar right here, let me just …

No I don't think so.

No?

No! Why, when of talking about my grandfather's death, your best friend's unexpected passing, would I want to sing a song?

I just thought an upbeat song might move us past this point.

But I want to talk about it, not forget it.

Let me call in some of my friends, people you don't know, good people. They know how to play guitar as well, and if we get the right ones we might have a bit of a jam.

Could we talk, instead.

If that's what you want.

My grandfather, I didn't really know him, not like you did. But I feel this immense pressure to attach an emotion, any emotion, to his passing. But I don't feel anything, though I can understand, intellectually, my loss. My loss, a selfish focus on unexperienced opportunities, not his. No longer can I receive his smile, and yet it isn't his ending I miss. But, ever since it happened a week ago, I can't help, but feel an pervasive, dispassionate dread. Every night before sleep a single thought passes through my consciousnesses, “Someday I will be dead. Sooner rather than later, for even a hundred years is a trivial time.”

What you're saying, it's perfectly normal, if anything's normal. There are many ways of reacting to a death, and it will fade, the pressure and the anxiety.

But should I want it to? This knowledge which impinges upon my consciousnesses, is it a curse like one initially supposes, or a blessing, a tearing away of the veil of ignorance? A constant reminder, like a gadfly, to spring one to action.

So, you're inspired to seize the day, live life to the fullest, all that?

No, it isn't quite that, I don't know if I have the self-knowledge, the understanding, the vocabulary to explain.

No?

No, no. I mean, obviously everyone should live in the manner which matters to them, but I can't do any better than this facile, pathetic aphorism.

It's ok.

Do people think about it much, when they aren't distracting themselves?

It's not as if humanity, in the capacity of its greatest minds, hasn't extensively explored the possibility, the meaning, and the result of death. But conclusions are hard to reach, and as for what the mass of individuals believe, or how often they consider it, I know of no survey. But, eventually all conversations, like life, must end. Eventually one has to return to the mundanity of living; eating, sleeping, working, playing. One can't spend all of life considering one's death.

Maybe it's better to pass the question by. Sometimes, death seems an atrocious horror with which we are marked at birth, aggravated for some by the painful tortured of brutal suffering, sourced from natural causes or their treacherous sisters and brothers, and those who receive a swift, silent death should consider themselves lucky.

Are you afraid of death or suffering?

Did you listen to what I said?

I don't think you realize the difference.

And I think you accord to my youth, the same misguided, disdainful belief, that young wounds are only superficial and trifling.

But, there's a difference, and anyone with a thimbleful of experience can see it.

Here's an elder, conjuring forth the ultimate expression of a shutdown.

The agony of fresh loss can afflict even the most youthful heart. But the trauma of pain is a unique experience mostly avoided until the end.

If only you could continue the conversation without condescension. I want to talk of a solution.

We left that behind, with living life to the fullest.

Why shouldn't one avoid both agony and ending?

But there are other solutions as well. Meaning, whether, virtue, happiness, pleasure, acceptance, oblivion, can provide what you need.

It's obvious some are aiming for a higher achievement, immortality.

Life in, or as, a machine? A fantasy for the wealthy to chase, a opiate offered for the deluded ninty-nine percent, who will never feel the brush of an electron. Even if humanity could achieve potential immortality, by reducing itself to computers, continually transferring one's consciousness, it's difficult to imagine the ability to achieve invincibility. Everything decays, whether synthetic or skin.

At least one needn't agonize about pain. But I think you discard this solution too swiftly.

One can imagine the trauma of transfiguring to the confines of an artificial reality, the sloughing off of the skin, to transcend any anguish formerly conceived of by mortal mind.

Those who have already aged, have made friends with death, as one comes to like their blemished body or the inferior companion they met in elementary, but youth still rebels against acceptance and acquiescence.

Then keep rebelling against concession to the common answers and outcomes. But don't renounce endurance.

What?

You and I are going to need quite a bit of the latter. What say, we take this opportunity to forge a bond. We'll meet once a week to discuss whatever is one the mind. Not the frivolous, contemptible  nonsense people spout, faux-earnestly about upon every occasion, but the stuff that commands all the mind's faculties. There won't be any concealing, or deception, or peremptorily pacifying. But at the end, as everyone must, we'll relax our reason. We'll celebrate what we have with music, friends, entertainment, and food. And people can discuss that which is useless without wonder, but made better by it.

I think I see the outline of life in this compromise. And until I find any better answer, I accept.
Note: The first one hundred and one words, (up until the first ellipsis) are taken from Season 3, Episode 6 of The Newsroom.

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