Godfather Death
Decades ago, after I turned forty and one of my sons left home for college, I suddenly felt old and found comfort (or cover at least) in the quip: “Growing old ain’t bad when you consider the alternative.” This assumes growing old to be better than dying, and most people would agree. Otherwise, seniors would be immune to death threats and impossible to hold at gunpoint. I remember when I was a teenager, alive in the fresh horror of realizing that personal immortality was no Kalashnikov Truth--not a thing objectively verifiable or universally accepted--that for all I could ever know, death is oblivion. I was flying on my bike down a steep incline one afternoon and suddenly reflected that a blowout and crushed skull might instantly snuff out, not just Billy Green, past and present, but (as far as that Billy was concerned) the earth, sun, moon, and stars—and even the absence of these spheres. Not only light would vanish, but darkness. Not only existence, but nonexisence. Not ...