See:
UNSUBSCRIBED: THE JAZZ MAN
But WAIT!
That hermetically-sealed compact marble urn may have
contained my Dad's ashes, the detritus of a few million cells or a few billion
nucleotides that, until December 2005, for 91 years, had formed a
"vessel" for his "essence". But Dad's uniqueness among
humans was known primarily to those who knew him, through his personality.
We celebrated his personality and the ways in which he touched our lives and so
many others. Then we committed the lifeless ashes to a hole in the ground where
a manufactured granite product attests to the dates of his physical existence,
beginning and end.
I won't say we atheists don't grapple with mortality, and sometimes entertain
vague hopes. But I think the honest part of being a human, and an atheist, is
to recognize that mortality is inevitable and that things end.
Grief and loss are the terrible prices we pay for living in a world that
changes, and that has produced us, ever so briefly. The dead are gone forever, never
to return. All we can do is cherish their memory - and fight as hard as we can
to delay our own demise, rage at our inevitable failures, and eventually,
reconcile ourselves to the reality.
I'm not afraid of death - I'd just rather not be there when it happens...
"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow
and I am in them and that is eternity."
[Edvard Munch, Artist most famous for painting "The Scream"]
My brother and his wife came up from Florida. It was good
to see them. They didn't drink all the light beers I'd laid in for 'em. They
must be slowin' down...
We called a priest at University of Dayton to preside over a brief commitment ceremony in the chapel at Calvary, the local Catholic cemetery.
The small gathering consisted of about equal numbers of atheists, Catholics and
unaffiliated Christians.
Afterwards, we all drove home, put some jazz on the CD player, as befit the Jazz Man, o' course. We drank beer and Jack, and filled our bellies and retold the
stories he'll tell no more...
