"Do I Have Some Sort Of Deathwish? Why Yes I Do!"

Back when I was still a theist, I would admit that the topic of death made me very anxious. One of the many reasons why it made me feel uncomfortable was the consciousness that I knew I was not living my life in accordance to the holy scriptures. In fact I was quite certain that as far as adherence goes, when God gets my scriptural compliance rating report, my ass would fall somewhere at the bottom quartile ranking.

Now as an atheist, I am glad that I don’t have to deal with that non sense anymore of where my soul goes in the afterlife based on my obedience to the Holy Bible. But death still is an inevitable part of existence, and I do feel more comfortable talking about it because now I have some control over the terms on how I want to check out, based on my own preference (and not by some really old book).

So before I do give you my specific list of instructions, I just want to say that at this very moment that I am writing this, I do not in any way feel sick, depressed or anxious about anything. Life in general has been pretty good that I feel I don’t deserve all the opportunities I’ve had in nearly the last four decades of my existence. I just want that clear because the last thing I want is something bad happening to me after writing this and people have a field day concluding things. Anyway here you go:

1. I am all for physician aided euthanasia. I think people should have the right to terminate their own life. So if the doctors say that I have like a month left to live after being diagnosed with a terrible disease that will significantly affect my quality of life, I would want the remaining time I have left with my loved ones, go to Japan again for vacation or something if my body would allow. If the doctors say that my disease will eventually reduce me to a bed ridden vegetable or will affect my mental capacity eventually, I would want my remaining time spent the way I am today, lucid (well ok, kinda lucid, hehehe). If my brain gets affected and I start losing it, that person will no longer be me. There is no practical sense keeping me alive at that state and leaving my loved ones buried in financial debt from the hospital bills, not to mention the emotional trauma of having to see me suffer and be reduced from what I once was. So yeah when any of that happens, you have my permission to hit the pre-terminate button or pull the plug. Don’t worry, it’s cool.

2. I guess I would have something like a funeral service, but I definitely want it to be a completely secular activity, meaning absolutely no prayers or anything that has to do with religion. And if people show up to my funeral activity, absolutely NO ONE is to wear the color black (except if its a band shirt). Wear only bright colored clothes. My funeral will be a celebration of life, being an atheist there is no “and then” after I die, there is only a “back when Tek was still around”, and I want people to focus on that. I actually want a live rock blues band to play during the event, I will leave it to my wife and daughter who they want to bestow the honor of playing at my happy funeral. Hopefully my daughter becomes a famous drummer by that time and her band can take the stage, yes there has to be a stage.

3.  I don’t want my remains buried. I don’t want to be visited every Nov 1 and be part of the reason why traffic is bad on that day. I don't want to take up any unnecessary space when I'm dead. My remains are no longer me, so there is no "me" to visit. My remains will be in the minds of the people I experienced life with. I actually want to be an organ donor, so the recyclable parts should be donated to people who can still use it. The rest can be donated to science for study and if there are any parts left, you can give that to my wife and daughter to cremate. I was thinking I’d like my ashes scattered at sea because I loved diving and I am at my most peaceful state when I freedive, but my daughter had an even better idea. She wants to use my ashes to be used in an hour glass so that she can use it to time herself for whatever purpose. I think it’s an awesome idea, so please help her make that happen.

It may be a difficult thing for some people to wrap their heads around, but knowing that there is no afterlife not only made me feel more comfortable about accepting death as the ultimate end, but more importantly it really did make me value all the more everything else that happens before that.

For life to evolve through the millions of years it did and for me to have this one singular chance to experience what it means to be alive with the people I love and care for just leaves me at awe that words will only fail to describe.

I no longer concern myself with the afterlife, because I am way too busy trying to make my very own existence in this life time count with the people that matter to me. My goal is to positively affect as much people I come into contact with and be remembered at least for the good I’ve done.

There are a few other things I want done when I go back to being stardust, like what to do with my guitars and such, but those conversations I will have with my wife or daughter. So I will leave it to just those three things which I hope gets fulfilled when I’m gone, because if they aren’t and the Christians and theists are right after all about souls and spirits, I will come back to haunt you, and trust me I have all the time in the world to do it too!