3/17/2026
This week so far, I've been remembering when I wrote a ramble page on thanatophobia and themes of such within a petty flash game. It was a cringe analysis, I know, but I wanted to expand a bit about this fear because...
...It's a long story.
Last Saturday, the morning before I arrived at my biological father's house in New Jersey, my mother told me that my grandmother, who was living with him there, passed away from a stroke last night. She was the closest and sweetest grandmother I've ever had, but nonetheless I knew a day like that was coming because during the last time I saw her, her physical health was rapidly detereorating. Not only had she'd long been suffering from diabetes, but she survived through two strokes, only for a third to finally take her life away later on.
Yesterday was her funeral. Me and my biological father's side of the family as well as three other family friends visited my grandmother one last time at a funeral home. It was the first time I've ever seen a corpse in-person. I touched her forehead, and it was as cold as ice. I looked at her face for so long to the point where my expression turned into a thousand-yard-stare. I stood as still as a statue, desiring to move but couldn't. Reality started to become blurry and fuzzy. I was anxiously wondering "Where the hell am I? Who are these people? Who is this person that is 'sleeping'?"
Thoughts and questions flashed, circled, and bounced around as much as the chemicals in my brain did. I shivered in fear of the knowledge that this kind of thing is certainly going to happen to me at some point in my life, dreading what's next for me after such a scenario. My parents tell me that humans are eternal and that they only have a limited amount of time to be inside of their vessels until they go to heaven and meet God. Something within me hoped that such was the case but also there was a chance that it wasn't. This is what we look like without all of the bones, muscles, and organs, and whatnot. (GRAPHIC) Is this where our soul lies in? If so, when it shuts down and stops working, do our souls still work or do they stop working as well?
Maybe it was just me stupidly trying to comprehend death, even if us humans were fundamentally not designed to. (And I think it's better that way in the end. We were designed to take a journey, not reach a destination.) And we're not even designed to comprehend immortality either. I wouldn't even think immortality would make us human anymore because if we were to become so, the daily joys and pains of life would feel unappealing and numb to us over time. What once would give us a reminder of our humanity (body, emotion, self) wouldn't give anything back in return anymore at that point. We long for what we can't have, but when we do, we gain nothing satisfying long-term. We long for a gift that we most likely won't even like having. What kind of paradox is this? If that's the case then it'd be worthless to achieve immortality at this point. Maybe it is safer for or sanity if we don't figure out all of the answers to mortality and immortality. It's how people are able to die peacefully after all.
